Street SpiritJ U S T I C E N E W S & H O M E L E S S B L U E S I N T H E B A Y A R E A

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by Terry Messman

When Country Joe McDonald,one of the major anti-war voic-es of the Vietnam era, began

expressing support and solidarity for mili-tary veterans and combat nurses, his eyeswere opened to a fuller understanding ofthe issues of war and peace, and he beganwriting songs that enlarged our vision ofnonviolence and the peace movement.

As he listened to the troops forced tofight the nation’s wars, and learned fromcombat nurses who cared for grievouslywounded and dying soldiers, McDonald’ssongs became more deeply expressive ofthe values of compassion and reconcilia-tion. A seeming paradox lies at the heartof his work: Reverence for life was bornanew amidst the atrocities of war.

McDonald has been a voice for peacefor 50 years, stretching all the way back tohis days as an anti-war folk singer on thestreets of Berkeley in 1965, through hisperformances at massive antiwar demon-strations in the late 1960s, and up until thepresent day, when he still sings for peace atanti-war protests and veterans events.

A traveling troubadour for peace,McDonald has performed at anti-nuclearactions at Livermore Lab in California andat the Vietnam Veterans Memorial inWashington, D.C. He has sung for smallhomeless sleep-outs in Berkeley and gigan-tic peace rallies at the U.S. Capitol.

Along the way, he has composed aremarkable body of peace anthems. Yethe has also enlarged our understanding ofthe goals of the peace movement byinsisting that the soldiers sent into battleare also victims of war, and that militaryveterans need to be welcomed home andoffered justice when they return.

I interviewed Country Joe McDonaldin the North Berkeley home he shareswith his wife and family. Joe has beenmarried for 32 years to Kathy McDonald,and he has five children. His wife Kathyis a labor and delivery nurse and midwife.A niece and daughter are nurses. Hisbrother retired as a nurse practitioner fromKaiser after 36 years.

During the interview, I read toMcDonald the words of FlorenceNightingale, the Crimean War nurse whohas become one of his most cherishedheroes. Nightingale said, “I stand at thealtar of the murdered men and while I liveI fight their cause.”

That one sentence speaks volumes. Insaying she stands at the altar, she tells usthat soldiers have been sacrificed in war,and that their lives are sacred to her. In say-ing she fights their cause “while she lives,”she dedicates her entire life to them.

THE MURDERED MEN

When I asked McDonald what thosewords meant to him, he said: “I stand atthe altar of the murdered men.”

“I love the word murdered. MUR-DERED. These men were murdered. They

didn’t serve their country. They weremurdered. They were murdered not by theenemy. They were murdered by war. Theywere murdered by their government.”

McDonald has lifted his own voicetime and time again for the murderedmen, the soldiers and the veterans. Heconsistently tried to give a voice to theGIs on the front lines, the working-classkids shipped off to hellish fields ofslaughter they had no part in creating.

He saw no contradiction between writ-ing anthems of peace in defense of thechildren and civilians killed in Vietnam,Central America, Chile and Iraq; and inalso speaking out for the soldiers slain inbattle or killed after returning home fromwartime exposure to Agent Orange.

Listening to the views of military vet-erans and Vietnam War combat nursesfinally led him to the great icon of com-passion and mercy, Florence Nightingale,often called the founder of nursing.

THE GIRL NEXT DOOR (COMBAT

NURSE)Even though 7,465 women were

Vietnam veterans, the role of women inthe military went largely ignored untilLynda Van Devanter, an army surgicalnurse who had been stationed at an evacu-ation hospital in South Vietnam, spokeout about the forgotten women who hadserved in Vietnam.

When Van Devanter told veteransgroups that they had ignored the womenwho had served next to them in Vietnam,McDonald took it to heart, and wrote apowerful song that describes what hap-pens when the girl next door becomes acombat nurse. (“The girl next door” wasVan Devanter’s own description of herlife before Vietnam.)

Lynda Van Devanter became a leaderin bringing national attention to womenveterans struggling with Post-TraumaticStress Disorder (PTSD) and exposure to

Agent Orange. She was the founder andexecutive director of the Women’s Projectof the Vietnam Veterans of America,directing studies of the terrible healthproblems and PTSD suffered by womenveterans. She maintained that Vietnamveterans were ‘’a forgotten minority,’’ butthe women who had served as nurses were‘’the most forgotten.’’

McDonald’s song “The Girl Next Door(Combat Nurse)” describes how combatnurses save lives in the most horrific cir-cumstances. It also gives an unforgettableaccount of the torment that afflicted thenurse when she returned home, so muchso that her childhood friends can’t under-stand why she is not fun anymore.

“But a vision of the wounded screams inside her brainAnd the girl next door will never be the same.”It’s an indelible image: “A vision of

the wounded screams inside her brain.” Van Devanter struggled with terrifying

hallucinations and recurring nightmares ofthe wounded soldiers she had cared for inVietnam, and when she returned home,her life was never the same.

Finally, she fell victim to a fatal dis-ease she had carried home from the battle-field. The Vietnam Veterans of Americaattributed her death to a vascular diseasefrom wartime exposure to Agent Orange.

McDonald has great respect for LyndaVan Devanter, Rose Sandecki and combatnurses who nursed soldiers in Vietnam,then came home and helped veterans dealwith the fallout of war, the diseases causedby Agent Orange, and the psychologicaldamage that ruined so many lives.

Rose Sandecki served as an ArmyNurse Captain in Vietnam. Her painfulexperiences while nursing badly woundedand dying soldiers led her to becomeleader of a Veterans Administration out-reach center dealing with Post-TraumaticStress Disorder after the war.

When McDonald told Sandecki howFlorence Nightingale returned to Englandfrom the Crimean War and refused to talkto her family, or the press, or anybody,and just snuck home in private, Sandeckitold him that she had come home in secretin exactly the same way from Vietnam.

THE LADY WITH THE LAMP

It seems predestined that McDonald’sdesire for veterans to be treated with respectand understanding — instead of being writ-ten off by their own government — wouldlead him straight to the woman who provid-ed medical care, compassion and friendshipto thousands of soldiers dying alone andfriendless on nameless battlefields —Florence Nightingale.

He had soon read everything he couldfind about Florence Nightingale’s pio-neering work in battlefield nursing duringthe Crimean War. He was so impressedby her dedication and compassion that he

Songs of Healing in a World Torn by WarThe Street Spirit Interview with Country Joe McDonald

See Songs of Healing by Country Joe page 8

Joe McDonald at Florence Nightingale’s grave in England. Photo: David Bennett Cohen

Country Joe McDonald pays tribute to the combatnurses who offer a better vision of wartime heroism bybravely bringing healing and mercy into war zoneswhere medical care is a matter of life and death.

April 2016ST R E E T SP I R I T2

by Steve Pleich

The defeat on March 8 of the pro-posed amendment to the localsleeping ban by a 5-2 vote of the

Santa Cruz City Council was extremelydisappointing to advocates for peopleexperiencing homelessness — but notentirely unexpected.

It was the hope of some that the pas-sage of the amendment would, at the veryleast, signal a willingness on the part ofthe community at large to redefine therelationship between the housed andunhoused in our community, as well aspresent what some were calling a “once ina generation” opportunity to legitimize thebasic need for and right to sleep.

One speaker at the City Council ses-sion called the proposed amendment“both sound public policy and an appealto the better angels of our nature.” Of theseveral dozen residents who spoke duringthe public comment period, only threespoke out against the amendment.

Regrettably, and again not surprisingly,the council members were not moved tohave their votes reflect the voices of thepeople. For decades, the city has progres-sively sought to criminalize homelessnessand the recent vote is little more than asad confirmation of that well-establishedand deeply entrenched policy.

One longtime observer commenteddirectly following the vote that “now ourcommunity is officially homelessunfriendly.” And while activists and ordi-nary residents alike are doing consider-able soul-searching, the immediate futureis not without some hope.

In reaction to this latest refusal by localgovernment officials to recognize even themost basic human rights for people experi-encing homelessness, several things hap-pened almost immediately. Some residentssent angry letters or emails to council mem-bers or issued passionate public statementsdecrying the council’s decision.

Others, such as members of the

Association of Faith Communities ofSanta Cruz County, which had unani-mously endorsed the amendment, orga-nized a working group to brainstorm andconsider options for further action. Onepositive offshoot of the amendment’sdefeat was the proposal of a JointCity/County Task Force on Homelessnesswhich is being put forward, ironicallyenough, by three of the council memberswho voted against the amendment.

And though there is always under-standable suspicion about the efficacy ofthe task force model, there is a belief thatrecommendations in support of revisitingpreviously defeated initiatives like thesafe spaces sleeping program and recre-ational vehicle parking program, maycome from the work of such a group.

Historically in Santa Cruz, we have seenboth productive and negligible results fromtask forces, but some activists feel that agrassroots approach to developing safesleeping spaces has not met with any signif-

icant success and so are willing to considerother more institutional options.

But there is strong disagreement as tostrategy even among local activists. SaysHomeless United for Friendship andFreedom (HUFF) founder Robert Norse,“We should be building on the shouldersof those who pioneered the direct actionapproach to homeless activism, not rely-ing on the approval of the powerful.”Many agree with Norse’s point.

The resolution to create this new TaskForce is set for hearing on the Santa CruzCity Council agenda on April 12, andthere will certainly be extensive publicinput concerning formation of the group,the scope of the work, how residents cansubmit applications and the process bywhich community members will beappointed to serve. As always, we contin-ue to live in hope.

Steve Pleich is an advocate for peopleexperiencing homelessness in Santa Cruz andSanta Cruz County.

Sleeping Ban Defeat in Santa Cruz Raises Many Questions

by Sam Lew

The Suitcase Clinic providesmedical services, employment,housing and communityresources, a warm meal and a

place to chat for our clients. But we askourselves how effective we are truly beingin serving the homeless?

How many times have we actuallyasked the people and the communities weare serving what they want and what theyneed? Are our services aligned with thoseneeds — and, more importantly, is ourorganization structured so that clients canprovide feedback that informs and trans-forms our services and the way we pro-vide them?

These questions were the ones thatspurred the creation of Suitcase Clinic’sfirst Town Hall on Homelessness, an openforum for homeless people to share theirstories, opinions and suggestions aroundthe topic of homelessness.

On Saturday, March 5, 2016, nearly 70homeless individuals, social serviceproviders and students gathered at theNorth Berkeley Senior Center to listenand discuss homelessness. The eventbegan with breakfast, followed by publiccomment and a group discussion aboutsolutions and what could be done next.

The Town Hall focused on homeless-ness in Berkeley, rather than the SuitcaseClinic’s organization, although many par-ticipants were attendees of the clinic.

It was an emotional morning as peoplevoiced their grievances and personal experi-ences with homelessness. Many of themechoed the feeling of a lack of dignity, par-ticularly with the scarce number ofrestrooms and showers available to home-less people, strict shelter rules, and the waythat homelessness is perceived by society.

“People don’t realize how hard it is tosurvive on the street,” said Tim, one partici-pant of the Town Hall. “In the newspaper,all you see is the homeless are the problem,but let people show they are people.”

There was also a sense of communityand unity during the Town Hall as partici-pants encouraged and supported oneanother.

“Homeless people are the most cre-ative, talented people I’ve ever met — wehave to be. I’ve seen it through artwork,musicians, the places we design to sleep,”one woman commented about the lack ofemployment for homeless people. “Weare wasting huge amounts of humanpotential and talent.”

Shawn O’ Conner added, “Just give us

an opportunity. If we have employment,that means we’re going to pay taxes oneverything. We just want to live here andgive to the community.”

After the Town Hall, many participantsexpressed interest in making it a monthlyor bi-monthly event. While the HomelessCommission and the Berkeley Task Forceare both spaces provided by the City ofBerkeley that engage community mem-bers to speak and learn about homeless-ness, they may be inaccessible to home-less folks. Both committees meet in theevening, when homeless shelters requirepeople to be back at the shelter.

“Of all the city meetings I go to abouthomelessness, there are never any home-less people there. But when we connectourselves, we can make a difference,” saidPaul Kealoha-Blake, who serves on theBerkeley homeless commission.

James Huynh, Executive Director ofthe Suitcase Clinic, reflected on the TownHall, saying, “Someone just walked out ofthe door and said to me, ‘thank you forgiving me a voice,’ but I didn’t give him avoice. We only gave him food.

“All the content here was generated bythem, and for them to thank us alwaysputs me back into perspective of what weare going against. It’s a system thing thatpermeates in people not having a chanceto speak or be heard in their daily lives,which has real effects when trying to fightthese systemic issues.”

This is not something that the SuitcaseClinic can do alone — nor do we want to.Ending homelessness requires a collabora-tive effort between many organizations,government agencies, homeless peopleand their allies. However, it’s going totake more than simply providing social

services or changing policies. It means working with homeless peo-

ple and bringing their often-silenced voic-es to the forefront in all aspects of anti-homelessness work. As social serviceproviders and activists, we need to con-stantly examine and re-examine our ownorganizations to critically evaluatewhether or not we are serving the popula-tions we claim to serve as best we can.And perhaps the best way we can do so issimply by asking: what do you think?

*** *** *** *** *** ***The Suitcase Clinic wants to know

your comments, concerns, and sugges-tions about homelessness and our clinic.Please email SuitcaseShare@gmail.comabout things that you want to see changed,solutions you’d like to propose, or if yousimply want to become involved withSuitcase Clinic’s advocacy efforts.

Suitcase Clinic Holds First Town Hall on Homelessness

The Suitcase Clinic held a Town Hall on Homelessness in Berkeley, a forum for homeless people to share stories and ideas.

“Homeless people are the most creative, talented people I’ve ever met — we have tobe. I’ve seen it through artwork, musicians, the places we design to sleep,” onewoman commented about the lack of employment for homeless people. “We arewasting huge amounts of human potential and talent.”

April 2016 ST R E E T SP I R I T 3

Commentary by Mike Lee

Irealized over breakfast this morningthat I am an embarrassment to the city.Here you have public policy spending

millions of dollars on people just like me.The end result is that me and mine windup with a sandwich and maybe a mat onthe floor. Once in a while, one of usmaybe gets a place inside, because of fac-tors beyond our control.

Playing the housing game is just likeplaying slots in Las Vegas. You put yourmoney (or time) in, pull the handle andhope for a positive result. At least inVegas, if you hit the jackpot you get atleast a roast beef sandwich.

It seems that once you attain the statusof homelessness, you become a non-per-son — a liability to be pandered to orcriminalized. Never mind that at my ageof 60, with an income and no inclinationto commit crimes, do drugs or spend allmy money at the liquor store, I’m stillconsidered an object to be managed.Talked about in all sorts of ways. Seen butnever acknowledged.

Recently I had the misfortune to inter-act with the City of Berkeley’s newestscheme in combating homelessness. It’scalled the coordinated entry system. In anutshell, it is supposed to be a one-stopshop for homeless services. In reality, it ispiles of paper work and, quite frankly, acomplete waste of time.

Keep in mind that in my particularinstance, I am way over-qualified for ser-vices. This is based on federal guidelineswhich take into account my age, health,and length of homelessness. Not only do Iscore very high on these factors, I have an

income and no current substance issues. Iam the poster child for who society wantsto see off the sidewalks of Berkeley.

When the guidelines were crafted, itwas people just like me that they had inmind to provide a hand up, and not ahandout.

After endless amounts of time andtravel filling out stupid forms, we come tomy needing to prove I’m homeless. Justbeing there proves a need. What, youthink somebody with sufficient resourcesis going to go through this process for abug-infested hotel room? “Yeah, buddy,I’m not going to pay for a nice cleanplace; let’s go live in dirt and squalor.”

Let’s set that silliness aside for amoment and consider who you are inter-viewing. I find myself in the role of beinga public figure. It’s not any one thing thatI’ve done. It’s probably because I’m opin-ionated and have a big mouth. I meet on aregular basis with decision makers withinthe City of Berkeley whom for some oddreason or another think I might havesomething useful to say.

I smiled and said the form isn’t neces-sary. Just pick up the phone and call theCity, and the first person that answers,you ask them about me. I’m not just anyold bum, but a candidate for mayor and avery loud advocate for the community. Assuch I’m sort of kind of notorious here inBerkeley.

As I walked away from this whole no-sense I thought: My gawd, if they treat methis way, think of someone in my sameexact position who is largely unknown.How do they prove they are homeless?

The City’s embarrassment arises fromthe fact that despite spending all this

money, devising numerous schemes andfive-year plans, ad nauseum, they stillcan’t get one bum off the street. I amproof positive that the system is broken.That it is charity and not solution-based.

I am truly blessed that I enjoy someskill, talents and a reasonable level ofintelligence. So much so that recently amember of the dark side said I was one ofthe more rational and reasonable peopleon the other side of the aisle. I don’t saythese things to pump up my chest, brag orthink I’m special, but to point out that ifyou can’t put me in a house, how is yoursystem going to deal with someone of lessabilities or financial resources?

The system is broken and needs to befixed. You start by looking at this bum’ssituation and asking yourself this: Whatkind of system are we going to create tohelp people like Mike get a house? Not asandwich or a pat on the head. A hand upand not a hand out.

Mike Deserves a House

Mike Lee is an activist and a homeless candidate for mayor. David Bacon photo

Compiled by Daniel McMullan

“To sin by silence when they shouldprotest makes cowards of men.”— Abraham Lincoln

“Where words fail, music speaks.”— Hans Christian Andersen

“Who hears music, feels his solitudePeopled at once.”— Robert Browning

“I like beautiful melodies telling me ter-rible things.”— Tom Waits

"Music is the great uniter. An incredibleforce. Something that people who differon everything and anything else canhave in common."— Sarah Dessen

"Music... will help dissolve your perplexi-ties and purify your character and sensi-bilities, and in time of care and sorrow,will keep a fountain of joy alive in you."— Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Someday we will live in peaceTell the leaders of every landOver and over so they understandMilitary madness has gone too farIn our world today there is no room for war.Tell the people of all landsLet's get together the future is in our hands.United nations have to agreeTo say no to war, and yes to peace.We believe in talking not fighting.— Country Joe McDonald

Gimme Some Truth

Street SpiritStreet Spirit is published by AmericanFriends Service Committee. The ven-dor program is run by J.C. Orton.

Editor, Layout: Terry MessmanWeb content: Jesse ClarkeHuman Rights: Carol Denney

Contributors: Ellen Danchik, CarolDenney, Mike Lee, Sam Lew, DanielMcMullan, Jim Marshall, Betsy Morris,Steve Pleich,

All works copyrighted by the authors.The views expressed in Street Spirit arti-cles are those of the individual authors,not necessarily those of the AFSC.

Street Spirit welcomes submissions ofarticles, artwork, poems and photos. Contact: Terry MessmanStreet Spirit, 65 Ninth Street,San Francisco, CA 94103E-mail: spirit@afsc.orgWeb: www.thestreetspirit.org

John Lennon: “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”And so happy Christmas (war is over)For black and for white (if you want it)For yellow and red ones (war is over)Let’s stop all the fight (now)

Creedence Clearwater Revival: “Fortunate Son” Some folks inherit star spangled eyesOoh, they send you down to war, And when you ask ‘em, “How much should we give?”Ooh, they only answer “More! More! More!”

Country Joe & the Fish: “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag”Come on Wall Street, don’t be slow,Why man, this is war au-go-goThere’s plenty good money to be maBy supplying the Army with the tools of its trade.

Stevie Wonder: “Heaven Help Us All” Heaven help the child who never had a home,Heaven help the girl who walks the street aloneHeaven help the roses if the bombs begin to fall,Heaven help us all.

The Kinks: “20th Century Man”This is the age of machinery, a mechanical nightmare,The wonderful world of technology,Napalm, hydrogen bombs, biological warfare,This is the twentieth century, but too much aggravationIt’s the age of insanity.

Bob Dylan: “Masters of War” Come you masters of war/ You that build all the gunsYou that build the death planes/ You that build all the bombsYou that hide behind walls/ You that hide behind desksI just want you to know/ I can see through your masks.

O’Jays: “When the World’s at Peace”When the world’s at peace will it still be in one piece?I pray for the day when the bombs and the bullets ceaseCome let’s make a change, or leave the world in dustLet’s be the world of love for the ones that follow us

Phil Ochs: “I Ain’t Marching Anymore” For I flew the final mission in the Japanese skySet off the mighty mushroom roarWhen I saw the cities burning I knew that I was learningThat I ain’t marching anymore

Marvin Gaye “What’s Going On” Father, father, we don’t need to escalateYou see, war is not the answer for only love can conquer hate

Edwin Starr: “War” Ohhh, war, I despiseBecause it means destruction of innocent livesWar means tears to thousands of mothers eyesWhen their sons go to fight and lose their livesI said, war, huh Good God, y’allWhat is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

The Doors: “The Unknown Soldier”Unborn living, living, dead/ Bullet strikes the helmet’s head And it’s all over for the unknown soldier It’s all over for the unknown soldier

Curtis Mayfield “We Got to Have Peace”And the soldiers who are dead and gone,If only we could bring back one,He’d say “We’ve got to have peace”To keep the world alive and war to cease

Buffy Sainte-Marie: “Universal Soldier”He’s five feet two and he’s six feet fourHe fights with missiles and with spearsHe’s all of thirty-one and he’s only seventeenHe’s been a soldier for a thousand years

Bobby Darin: “Simple Song of Freedom”Come and sing a simple song of freedomSing it like you’ve never sung beforeLet if fill the air, tell the people everywhereWe, the people here, don’t want a war.”

Holly Near: “It Could Have Been Me”“Students in Ohio two hundred yards awayShot down by a nameless fire one early day in MaySome people cried out angry“You should have shot more of them down”But you can’t bury youth my friendYouth grows the whole world round.It could have been me, but instead it was youSo I’ll keep doing the work you were doingAs if I were two

Songs of Peace from the Vietnam Era

April 2016ST R E E T SP I R I T4

by Carol Denney

Afriend reminded me recentlythat when Senator DianneFeinstein was mayor of SanFrancisco, she thought that

homelessness was going to be a briefphase, and one proposal floating throughtown was the idea of mobile cement drainpipes to be used as temporary shelters.

The Department of Public Works wasalready adept at carting them around; andthey were too heavy to steal, unbreakable,semi-private, washable, and available.And if you think this is a little nutty,you’ll have a sense of my response to tinyhouses, the movement for miniatureabodes sometimes promoted as one solu-tion to the housing crisis.

My friend said that all the contractorproposing the drain pipe shelters wasrequesting from the city was “a plot to putthem on.” And I thought, well, golly. Is thatall? Because that’s what Liberty City, thecommunity of tents on Berkeley’s old CityHall lawn, was requesting. And that’s whatthe people in tents under the Division Streetfreeway overpass were requesting afterbeing flushed away from San Francisco’sMarket Street Super Bowl celebration area.

That’s what the community of peopleliving on the Albany Bulb was requesting,before Albany officials and the policeevicted them. That’s what people ferryingwhat little they have left to call their ownhave been requesting of cities nationwidefor decades, along with their human rightsand perhaps a little compassion.

Most communities of homeless peopleare having the door slammed on suchrequests, and it isn’t because tents aren’taesthetically appealing. Liberty City wasa monument to cleanliness, orderliness,cooperative living and indigenous democ-ratic organization, much more so thanmost apartment buildings or even co-ops,and the famously liberal City of Berkeleystill swept it away.

I know what tiny houses do: they hityou square in the cute. The little windows,the cunning shingles, the seductive impli-cation that the smaller your house’s foot-print the “greener” you are. In the nebu-lous background of tiny house presenta-tions is something unidentifiable whichseems to make even the most intelligentpeople I know go weak in the kneesbecause they just can’t wait to put the tinycurtains up in the tiny house.

There are several curious implicationsthat seem to enter the room with any dis-cussion of tiny houses which I find myselfunable to accept as easily as everyonearound me. What issue does the miniatur-ization of housing solve for anyone exceptdevelopers, who are the more obvious voic-es pressuring city planning departments intoaccepting more and more density with lessand less living space and amenities?

“Curbed San Francisco” has a websitewhich illustrates the developer angle forminiaturization in an article by Tracy Elsenpublished on April 9, 2015. Local develop-er Patrick Kennedy is referred to as a“Micro Maven” for proposing 395-square-foot “affordable rentals” for a developmentsouth of Market Street not far from theDivision Street tents. The article refers tohim as “best known for developing teensybut livable micro-units.”

In Berkeley, he is better known forsnookering a gullible Berkeley CityCouncil into giving him generous oppor-tunities to ignore height restrictions andwaive pesky requirements on the groundsthat his buildings would replace theatersor provide cultural spaces most of whichproved theatrically, culturally, or finan-cially unworkable, having been designedprimarily as Potemkin villages.

There is no mechanism for making sure

these micro-apartments aren’t snapped upby people who need a San Francisco pied-a-terre in town for a quick change ofclothes while their real lives, their familylives and community lives, are lived some-where over the bridges where they cangrow some carrots in the back yard.

Let me clarify that I love the tiny hous-es. They hit me right in the Betty CrockerEasy-Bake Oven. But with all due respectto the people who have built small,portable houses of recycled materials (orbuffalo hides) for centuries, one 264-square-foot micro unit hit the SanFrancisco market this past December forthe “affordable” price of $425,000.

Developers are better than any of therest of us at capitalizing on the housingcrisis, and are no more likely to be moti-vated by honest human needs and long-term community planning than the enthu-siastic college students who compete forannual prizes with their tiny housedesigns, houses in which they have noplans to actually live.

Tiny houses are not necessarily anymore problematic than a tent. But the daymy city allows the person with the$10,000 to $80,000 tiny house a city-sanctioned public space for his or hercharming mini-abode, I will be theredemanding that the person with less than$10,000 and only a charming tent beallowed the same privilege, and I hope Iwill not be alone.

I don’t want to see either the housingcrisis, the cute factor, or both used to cre-ate a new tier of underclass in towns asyet unable to see people struggling on thestreets as refugees from a federal, state,and municipal housing policy which cre-ated the horror of homelessness out of thewhole cloth of greed.

Focusing on the cunning curtains onthe adorable windows of the tiny housewithout first securing the human rightsmany cities increasingly subtract from thepoor strikes me as falling right out of thedeveloper’s or planner’s playbook, whereindividual solutions are prized and larger,collective visions are just somehow toocomplex for contemplation. The issueisn’t the size (or cuteness) of the house,tent, or place you roll out your sleepingbag and hang your washed-out socks inthe nearby tree.

It’s the unwillingness of your town, city,landowner or public official to allow you tobe there at all. I’m hoping the seduction ofminiaturization doesn’t distract from thecall for a right to rest, for human rights, andfor housing based on the needs of mini-mum-wage workers, people with disabili-ties, veterans, and low-income seniors whocan’t compete in a market designed by andfor the one percent.

Tiny houses fall suspiciously into thebasket of misconceptions one often hearsat planning meetings and zoning hearingsmost people don’t have time to attend:

1. The misconception that there is notenough land, resources, money to address

the housing crisis. This is nonsense. Weare a wealthy nation capable of housingthe poor. One should never confuse anabsence of resources with an absence ofpolitical will.

2. The misconception that tiny houses’“cute quotient” will overpower issues ofplanning and zoning such that that thenecessary square footage will just magi-cally manifest. Again, this is nonsense,with all due respect to pet developers’projects’ peculiar success on politicallypacked citizen commissions.

3. The misconception that poor people(and apparently nobody else) should startliving their lives in miniature. This is notjust nonsense, it is offensive.

People just seem to love the idea ofthese houses being small, as though poorpeople somehow need less room thanother people. As though they would needless room to cook, less need to have book-shelves, less need to have friends over fora meal, etc. Hidden in these assumptionsis an assumption that people who havegone through a period of grinding povertyneed less light, less space, less access tocomputers, art supplies, pianos, compan-ionship, room for their children, etc. Iwould argue the opposite.

The main market for tiny houses iswealthy people: land owners and home-owners hoping to situate a temporaryguest room where the garden tool shednow resides in an ample backyard andneed to coax considerable flexibility andbaskets of variances from their local citycouncil, zoning board, and planning com-mission to do so. The severe subdivisionof lots in residential areas, howevergreased by the housing crisis, looks a lotless green when one factors in the impacton resources for the rest of the neighbor-hood in the same ways and for the samereasons that loose rules about Airbnb’sshort-term rentals take a neighborhoodtoll without housing the poor.

Live in a teacup if you like, I would sayto tiny house proponents, those who aren’tfrankly angling to capitalize on the humanneed for shelter or jousting enthusiasticallyfor some academic design prize. But thinkdeeply before requesting the miniaturiza-tion of someone else’s life or needs.

An unexamined love affair with tinyhouses runs the risk of creating what mostdevelopers are building anyway: housingthat addresses such a minimum of humanneeds that the need for storage, parking,companionship, bookshelves, etc is visitedupon the surrounding neighborhoods if notpiled up in the yard. Neighbors of denselypacked, student-filled, in no way affordableparty houses can assure you that not provid-ing parking on site doesn’t preclude theinevitable impact on the surroundingstreets, which fill up with the dense build-ing residents’ cars anyway while the devel-oper, happily living in a large house inOrinda, periodically dusts the environmen-tal prize hung by the mantel.

Do tiny houses solve human rights

issues in a town which criminalizes sittingon the sidewalk, either on paper or infact? There is no evidence of this. Do tinyhouses magically create square footagefor people who need to rest with theirbelongings without being criminalized for“camping” or “blocking” the sidewalk?There is no evidence of this. Do tinyhouses address the need for public bath-rooms and campgrounds? There is no evi-dence of this. Do they decriminalizesleeping in one’s car? There is no evi-dence of this. Do they address the corro-sive prejudice against the sight of povertyoften linked to criminalization cam-paigns? There is no evidence of this.

The tiny house enthusiasts seem toimply that tininess, or tidiness, or ecologi-cal economy, or the mere implication ofall three will solve or be part of a solutionto homelessness. If this were the case,Liberty City would have been celebratedinstead of swept away by the BerkeleyCity Council after its brief weeks of exis-tence a few months ago. Most of LibertyCity’s tents took up less space than thesmallest tiny house, and the green quali-ties of shared cooking and recreationalresources are obvious.

Liberty City was absurdly tidy, andbegan with several donated tents whichwere identical, kind of an aesthetic cherryon top for those charmed by uniformity.The residents swept the grounds and cor-rected the corners of papers on the infor-mation tables. It was public land, presum-ably already dedicated to address the pub-lic good. The need for people withnowhere to go to organize together fortheir own safety is a public good, a neces-sity, and slowly being officially recog-nized as a right.

Liberty City was close to three outdoorrestrooms in the park across the street, nearthe shelter (which ran out of room) nearfood giveaways, near the library, near tran-sit, etc., which any sensible city concernedabout public health issues should admitmade its location ideal. But Berkeley boot-ed it without bothering to provide alterna-tives for the people it served.

Again, I have no opposition in particu-lar to miniature houses which tickle thetoy box in everybody. But I am noticingthat the enthusiasm for tiny houses alwaysseems to sidestep the need for tent com-munities, campgrounds, RV parks, etc.,not to mention low-income housing. IfBerkeley and San Francisco sweep awaytent cities, doesn’t it seem a little absurdto think that they would join in celebrato-ry dances for tiny houses just becausethey’re adorable?

I would feel differently about this tinyhouse enthusiasm if we had already wonthe right to rest in public spaces, the rightfor people to sleep in their own cars, theobligation of cities with no low-incomehousing options to provide free publiccampgrounds, etc. But it worries me thatwithout these fundamentals, the “tinyhouse” enthusiasm diverts more sensibleefforts into a holding pattern for goodwishes and intentions which never honest-ly materialize for the enormous majorityof people in need.

It is never an either/or issue in thisworld. We can have tiny houses and civilrights, tiny houses and low-income hous-ing, tiny houses and public campgrounds;one does not preclude the other. But makesure your public campgrounds and humanrights issues come first, or run the risk ofhaving human housing needs boutiquifiedfor the gain of a handful of profiteers.And please consider that many people,especially people already doubled up instudio apartments intended for single indi-viduals and families trying to make do inone-bedroom apartments, have been liv-ing in miniature for decades.

Too Cute to Fail? A Critical Look at Tiny Houses

Art by Mike “Moby”Theobald

April 2016 ST R E E T SP I R I T 5

by Betsy Morris

The tiny house movement hasreached a critical mass — and thefolks who are bringing it into pub-

lic view aren’t the do-it-yourself builders,urban homesteaders, idealistic architects,or proponents of simple living, whethervoluntary or not. It’s the homelessactivists and advocates, often inspired byreligious values or the Occupy movementaround the country, who are announcingsome new Tiny Home Village everymonth or so now. The Bay Area may becatching up shortly. Here are a few storiesfor your consideration.

Dateline Berkeley, Thursday, March31, 2016. Mary, Dana Ryan, Michaelaand Maya are just a few of the 20 or sosharing ideas for a tiny home village.There’s a city-owned vacant lot in WestBerkeley that’s looking like a possiblecandidate for their own little cohousingcommunity, a vest-pocket neighborhoodof 8 tiny homes and a common house.

Many of the youth live in shelters orcouch-surf. They’re all part of YouthSpirit Artworks, a special place wherethey can go while juggling jobs, school,recovery, and living in temporary sheltersthat require that they leave every morningand not return until evening.

They’ve just finished their first meet-ing with Berkeley City CouncilmemberDarryl Moore — a free-ranging and kindof frustrating discussion about gentrifica-tion, racial change, homeownership, andculture shock, and an analysis of who isdoing what to help fund more resourcesfor youth living in shelters in Berkeley.

They already know they want a hand inbuilding the village. Eloquent and prob-ing, these youth explore the possibilitiesand challenges of self-governance, ofchoosing members, and living coopera-tively in close quarters.

They ask probing questions andattempt to visualize the possibilities.

“What if we had a counselor livingthere, or on call nearby?” “We couldbuddy up and have ‘safe words’ to leteach other know when we’re about tomelt down so we don’t take it out on eachother.” “What about a little room wherewe could let it all out?” “I know someonefrom the city who said we could get aportable building for a common house.”“If we could raise money for counselorsor teachers to help us, we could createjobs!” “Maybe we can hire folks we knowwho are trying to get their certificate, butjust missed a point on the test, and needmore experience.”

“Should we ever call the police? Thatdoesn’t feel safe.” “Only if someone reallycan’t keep our agreements and they mightharm someone, then the police can handlethat.” “Should it just be for kids in recov-ery? Or ones with jobs?” “We could helpeach other find jobs — there’s a lot of themdown there.” “It’s easy to bike around inBerkeley, and it’s not too far to the busstraight to Oakland, if you had a place tolock up bicycles inside a gate.” “But thereare so many people who need help: let’sremember to give back to the community.”

The Youth Spirit Artworks team, mem-bers of the Liberty City experiment likeMike Zintz and Mike Lee, and otherhomeless activists and affordable housingadvocates in the Berkeley Tiny HomeVillages Study Group will be attendingCity Council meetings to push for rapidaction on the promises of the EmergencyShelter measure passed in January. Lookfor more news ahead!

On November 21, 2014, the nonprofitOccupy Madison (OM) got theirOccupancy Permit for a Village of up tonine tiny homes. On November 22, theOM team helped the first villagers movein. Betty and Chris had been living in

their own tiny house for nearly a year onthe street without running water or elec-tricity, moving every 24 or 48 hours tocomply with parking requirements. Theirlittle house on a trailer now shares water,electricity, flush toilets, showers, laundry,a kitchen and more with four other house-holds. The village is governed by mem-bers of OM, including the residents.

Occupy Madison raised funds to buyan old garage/gas station, convert thebuilding to workshops and meeting space,and get permits for OM Village. Twenty-three homeowners nearby resisted the pro-ject with a petition based on unfoundedfears and misguided hostility. The CityCouncilmember stuck by his support, anda year later, neighbors acknowledged that,in fact, the neighborhood looked betterand felt better.

The formerly homeless members of theVillage share representation on the Boardof Occupy Madison. Each one signs acommunity agreement to be a good neigh-bor, and within the first year, one of theresidents was asked to leave for “egre-gious” violations. It was a hard decision;the president of the Board and OMVillage member abstained.

Occupy Madison Village is based onDignity Village in Portland, Oregon.What started as homeless activists claim-ing space under a bridge in downtownPortland has now grown into a 60-personvillage with tiny homes built of recycledmaterials by residents and volunteers.

Community members practice self-governance, selecting their own fellowmembers under their own communityagreements in partnership with a nonprofitsponsor that helps with negotiations withthe city which owns the land.

It is further from downtown jobs andservices, and by the terms of their landlease with the city, residents can only stayfor two years (except for those who han-dle important day-to-day responsibilitiesas volunteer staff). But, there is a lot ofmutual support for recovery, job place-ment, transit passes, and the like. One ofthe hardest things, according to a studentresearcher at MIT, is the lack of privacyover the porta-potties and shared showers.A little more space and a little moresoundproofing could go a long way.

Opportunity Village in Eugene,Oregon, was also inspired by DignityVillage and the Occupy movement. Theinstigator, Andy Heber, a young city plan-

ner, researched and wrote Tent CityUrbanism, an excellent book that com-bines a contemporary history of homelessencampments, and a guide to creating aself-governing tiny home village.

Heber cites the influence of cohousingdesign and intentional communities, as wellas classic patterns of village councilsbehind the development of OpportunityVillage. The Village is on land approvedand leased by the city, on the outskirts ofEugene in a commercial/light industrialneighborhoods. Car parking (mostly for vis-itors or staff) is off to the side.

[For more information on these self-governing tiny home villages seewww.VillageCollaborative.com orwww.Foursquarevillages.com andwww.tentcityurbanism.com]

A couple hours north of Eugene isQuixote Village in Olympia, Washington.It is also on land leased by the city, but alot of money went into grading the land,moving dirt, building 30 tiny houses and alarge, permanent office and commonsbuilding. Quixote Village is sponsored by afaith-based nonprofit called Panza. Panzaset up the village with input from a groupof homeless men over several years oftalks. That village is not self-governing.Members are selected by a professionalmanager who can request drug tests andevict members who don’t follow throughon problems they are causing.

Here in California and the Bay Area,we don’t have legal pathways to tinyhome villages yet, but a few pioneers areworking on that. Mobile homes, campers,trailers, manufactured homes, RVs,house-cars, converted trucks, vans, house-boats, and backyard sheds have been codi-fied as uninhabitable or zoned nearly tothe point of extinction. (Mobile Homeparks are protected in the state like anendangered species.)

Creating community is something for-mer homeless artists/activists out on theAlbany Bulb knew well. However, thereare also “sustainability pioneers” whohave found ways to create tiny home vil-lages behind the fences in commercial andindustrial areas.

Fresno has become the first city inCalifornia to legalize tiny homes for back-yard cottages. The City of Fresno hasstarted the process of change. As ofJanuary 3, 2016, property owners in resi-dential neighborhoods with an existinghome can add one tiny home in the back-

yard to the types of secondary structuresthey can rent or live in.

These recently added tiny homes aredefined as registered RVs with at least100 square feet of first-floor living space,with legal kitchen and bath, that can betowed but not driven.

DEFINITIONSDespite enormous free documentation

by the National Tiny House Association,numerous blogs, articles, books, docu-mentaries, and meet-up groups of tinyhouse fans around the country, the mediais struggling to understand what tinyhomes are. One national paper said tinyhouses were 1000 square feet or less. TheSan Francisco Chronicle, in a recent arti-cle in mid-March, identified tiny homes as300 to 500 square feet. No, no, no!

Let’s get a few things straight. The tinyhouse movement, by and large, is aboutfree-standing structures small enough andlight enough to tow behind your basic pick-up truck, using wood (preferably naturaland re-used), not the plastic and aluminumof your basic RV, camper or van, althoughused shipping containers and convertedbuses and vans can be admitted to the fold.

So here are some basics: A tiny homethat is legally towable by a lightweighttruck constrains you to a structure 8 feetwide and 20 feet long, or 160 square feet.But those trailers are pretty expensive,often the single largest expense, in fact.

There’s a lot of competition in the tinyhouse world to find the most artful, effi-cient, and functional gadgets (furniture,utility systems, boat heaters, compostingtoilets) to live comfortably and beautifullyin a space designed to fit the owner like aglove. All that and the charm too.

So many fully featured tiny homes(with bath and kitchen) might go as lowas 75 square feet, while ones withoutamenities (basically a shed) may be evensmaller (8 by 8 feet or 6 by 9 feet.) Somepeople even make smaller ones, basicallysomething you can tow by bicycle, a lock-able box with a window or glass door. Ifyou want examples of those, go to WoodStreet in Oakland; along the line fromAmerican Steel north to Emeryville, youcan see these little boxes mixed up withtents and tarps balanced precariously onthe curb in front of a mile of chain-linkfence protecting acres of California nativeweeds from the humans.

A Wide Variety of Tiny Homes Across the Country

Members of Youth Spirit Artworks and the Berkeley Tiny Home Village Study Group on a field trip to the PLACE forSustainable Living in Oakland, where tour guide Nik Bertullis and others offer workshops on building tiny homes out of recy-cled wood and used, half-sized shipping containers.

April 2016ST R E E T SP I R I T6

by Terry Messman

Country Joe McDonald composedone of the most acclaimed peaceanthems of the Vietnam era, “I Feel

Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag,” a rebelliousand uproarious blast against the warmachine. The song’s anti-war messageseems more timely than ever, with its sav-agely satirical attack on the arms mer-chants, the military and the White House.

“Fixin’ to Die Rag” condemns thearchitects of war and the military-industri-al complex in bitterly sarcastic terms.

“Come on Wall Street, don’t move slowWhy man, this is war au-go-go!There’s plenty good money to be madeBy supplying the Army With the tools of the trade.”Recently, the authors of a major new

book, We Gotta Get Out of this Place: TheSoundtrack of the Vietnam War, rankedhundreds of Vietnam-era songs and listed “IFeel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” byCountry Joe and the Fish as one of the toptwo most important songs named byVietnam veterans, right after “We GottaGet Out of This Place” by the Animals.

“The soldiers got it,” wrote co-authorsCraig Werner and Doug Bradley aboutCountry Joe’s song. Michael Rodriguez,an infantryman with the 2nd Batallion, 1stMarines, said: “Bitter, sarcastic, angry at agovernment some of us felt we didn’tunderstand — ‘Fixin’ to Die Rag’ becamethe battle standard for grunts in the bush.”

McDonald explained his song’s popu-larity among the GIs by saying that hehimself was “a veteran first and hippiesecond” and had written the song for thetroops. “It comes out of a tradition of GIhumor in which people can bitch in a waythat will not get them in trouble, but keepsthem from insanity.”

McDonald first performed “Fixin’ toDie Rag” on the streets of Berkeley in1965 as a folksinger. He soon was singingit on a stage at Woodstock in August 1969while an audience of 300,000 sang along,stood up and erupted in cheers.

McDonald then sang his anti-waranthem at one of the largest peace protestsin the nation’s history on April 24, 1971,as 250,000 people sang along with him ata massive peace rally on the steps of theCapitol building in Washington, D.C.

Fifty years later, showing that the songretains its power and relevance,McDonald sang it on Hiroshima Day,August 6, 2015, at an anti-nuclear protestat Livermore Laboratory. He sang it againon Veterans Day, 2015, at Berkeley’s cel-ebration of the 20th anniversary of theBerkeley Vietnam War Memorial — aveterans memorial that McDonald hadbeen instrumental in creating.

“Fixin’ to Die Rag” has been heard bymillions, yet few people are aware of theexceptional body of songs McDonald hasrecorded over the past 50 years on thegreat issues of war and peace.

He has written passionately about thesuffering of children caught in U.S.bombing raids (“An Untitled Protest”);soldiers dying in massive numbers in bat-tle (“The March of the Dead”); veteransdying of exposure to Agent Orange(“Secret Agent”); arms merchants whoprofit from war (“The Munition Maker”);and combat nurses suffering from post-traumatic stress (“The Girl Next Door”).

He has sung black-humor blasts againstthe insanity of hydrogen bombs (“PleaseDon’t Drop That H-Bomb On Me”); andsardonic put-downs of the two presidentswho deceived the nation about the VietnamWar: Lyndon B. Johnson (“Superbird”) andRichard Nixon (“Tricky Dicky”).

His songs have exposed the inhumanityof war at a depth that few other prominentmusicians have ever explored. He is nearly

alone among the musicians of his genera-tion in staying true to his principles — stillsinging for peace, still denouncing the bru-tality of war, and still performing at peaceactions and veterans events.

As music journalist Bruce Eder wrotein AllMusic, McDonald has become“almost a mythic figure in agitprop musicsince the early ‘80s, when he resumed hispeace-activist work — like some TomJoad-like character, wherever theAmerican government seems hell-bent onturning troops loose to kill people, he’sthere with his music, trying to answer thecall to arms with something else.”

Country Joe McDonald created two ofthe most important album-length song-cycles about war and peace ever recorded— Vietnam Experience and War, War,War. The tremendously powerful songsthat make up these two CDs should be aswidely known as “Fixin’ to Die Rag.” AsShakespeare wrote, “He is come to openthe purple testament of bleeding war.”

“AN UNTITLED PROTEST”Country Joe and the Fish recorded “An

Untitled Protest,” on their third album,Together. While “Fixin’ to Die” was rol-licking and hilarious, “An Untitled Protest”is as different as day from night. It is a pro-found poetic meditation, a haunting songof sorrow for the children killed in U.S.bombing raids by “silver birds” that blindlydrop anti-personnel weapons on “shoresthey’ve never seen.”

The song is a mournful drone, buildingin intensity into a major statement againstthe war machine. Like most of McDonald’speace songs, “Untitled Protest” is morehuman-hearted than political, guided not byideology, but by the response of conscienceto the tragedy of war.

The lyrics are a point-blank gaze intothe Vietnam War that witnesses every-thing: the “red and swollen tears” fallingfrom the eyes of a child caught in a bomb-ing attack, the oxen slaughtered as uncom-prehending casualties, and the soldiers whokill people “as they hide.” In an image thatremains unforgettably in my mind decadesafter I first heard this song, U.S. soldiersare “Khaki priests” who “ride a stoneLeviathan across a sea of blood.”

He didn’t blame the troops for the war,yet he refused to look away from the deathsof children and civilians in U.S. bombingraids. In the final verse, he warns that“those who took so long to learn the subtleways of death, lie and bleed in paddy mudwith questions on their breath.”

That is what this song achieves: It raisesquestions about the terrible mystery of warand death. In McDonald’s interview with

Street Spirit, he likened his role as a song-writer to a Greek chorus asking the disturb-ing questions that must be raised.

“KISS MY ASS”McDonald’s songs of war and peace

are unusual in that many are written fromthe point of view of soldiers in combatzones. “Kiss My Ass,” a song from hisVietnam Experience album, is sung in thevoice of a working-class kid who can’tstomach the Army officers when they tellhim that “thinking for yourself is acrime.” McDonald himself was once an18-year-old, working-class kid serving inthe military, and his personal experienceof being trapped in that system surelyenabled him to write this song.

The officers tell him: “Shut yourmouth, son, get back in line. We’re send-ing you to Southeast Asia.” The feisty kidresponds with a scorching blast againstthe Army that lots of drafted soldierswould have dearly loved to say.

“I said one, two, three, four,We don’t want your fucking war.A, B, C, D,Get someone else — hey, don’t get me.Left, right, left, right,The whole damn thing puts me uptight.”“One, two, three, four,” is done in the

rhythm of a military chant. It’s catchy, likethe chants led by drill instructors to get sol-diers to march in formation. But the chantin this song helps soldiers question march-ing in formation — and the entire military.

“AGENT ORANGE SONG”“The Agent Orange Song,” written by

Muriel Hogan and sung with deep feelingand conviction by McDonald, is an anthemfor countless veterans silently stalked anddestroyed by the chemical defoliant afterthey returned from the war.

It tells the story of a 17-year-old boyshipped to Vietnam and exposed to thedeadly dioxin in the defoliant — exposedas well to the deadly deception of U.S.government officials who lied about thelethal effects of Agent Orange.

“We’d hike all day on jungle trails through clouds of poison spray,And they never told me then that it would hurt my health today.”Agent Orange went on killing count-

less Vietnamese civilians long after thewar ended, and the U.S. government’sirresponsible and criminal use of the defo-liant destroyed its own soldiers as well.

“But I got the news this morning, the doctor told me so,They killed me in Vietnam and I didn’t even know.”Agent Orange can take years and years

before it springs its lethal trap, causing

cancer of the liver and Hodgkin’sLymphoma and other fatal illnesses.

The song ends with an unexpected andstirring call for resistance. It just floors theunsuspecting listener when a tragic storyabout Agent Orange suddenly turns into acall to rebellion by the vet’s own children.

“I’d be so proud to hear my kid say, Hell no, I won’t go!Because you killed my dad in Vietnam and he didn’t even know.”

“VIETNAM VETERAN STILL ALIVE”“Vietnam Veteran Still Alive” tells the

story of a son so stirred by his father’sservice in World War II that he enlists inthe military, thinking Vietnam will be agreat adventure. Once in the jungle, helearns that “the real thing can be a livinghell.” McDonald’s song captures thenightmarish experiences of a generationof soldiers sacrificed in Southeast Asia.

“I saw so many lose their bodies and their mindsin the jungles and blood of Vietnam.”When the soldier survives and finally

returns from the war, rather than beingwelcomed home as his father was wel-comed after World War II, he finds to hisdespair that he is treated as an enemy.

“Well, I come home from a war To a war at home, And I can’t help but wonder what it was I’ve done.I went off to fight the enemyI’m back home, and the enemy is me.”With those lyrics, McDonald gave

voice to many Vietnam veterans who feltrejected and dishonored by a nation thatblamed them for a war gone wrong.

McDonald got involved in Vietnamveterans organizations and was instrumen-tal in establishing veterans memorials inSan Francisco and Berkeley. He playedbenefit concerts across the nation for vet-erans, spoke out against their unfair treat-ment, and called for long overdue healingand respect for those who served.

He concludes his song by calling onthe White House to welcome them home.

“Hey, Mr. President, don’t you think it’s time, to give a little thanks to the boys from Vietnam?Just a little something to ease all the painand welcome them back home again.”He still sings an anti-war message today,

but it has become more complex andnuanced due to his awareness of the suffer-ing of soldiers in war, and the nation’s mis-treatment of its Vietnam veterans.

It’s an intriguing paradox that one ofthe most outspoken anti-war voices of hisgeneration also became one of the pre-

Country Joe McDonald, Singing Louder Than the Guns

Country Joe McDonald performed anti-war songs at Livermore Lab on Hiroshima Day, August 6, 2015. Ellen Danchik photo

See Country Joe: Singing Louder page 7

April 2016 ST R E E T SP I R I T 7

eminent voices calling on the nation tohonor its veterans. His work in this areahas helped to awaken many people.

“VIETNAM NEVER AGAIN” This melodic rocker is sung in the voice

of a GI struck by shrapnel and locked inLong Binh Jail, a military stockade inSouth Vietnam. It describes the alienationof GIs against nearly every level of society— including presidents, generals, business-men, even hippies — by setting up aneffective series of contrasts showing howbusiness leaders profited while veteranssuffered from the weapons of war.

“I’d like to be a businessman selling guns and planesInstead of in this bunker with rounds coming in.I’d like to be the President talking to the pressInstead of here in Khe Sanh with shrapnel in my chest.”

“MOURNING BLUES”“Mourning Blues” is a requiem for an

entire generation. It is the most beautifullyaffecting song on Vietnam Experience, aplaintive country blues that McDonaldsings in an aching voice.

It’s the kind of song that could havebeen sung as a country lament by MerleHaggard in a Bakersfield bar or as a bluesballad by Bukka White on the streets ofMemphis. It’s that timeless.

No rocking anti-war lyrics here, no bat-tlefield firefights, just sorrow and emptinessat the loss of a loved one. It’s a theme asold as the hills, and as sad as the blues.

“Someone I love has passed awayThey’re not here with me today.“I feel so lonely and so empty without them in my world.”It could have been written by anyone

who ever lost a lover or a child or a par-ent, and McDonald sings it slowly, in abeautifully expressive vocal, melancholyand aching with loss.

“You miss your well when it’s gone dry.Can’t stop these tears fall from my eyes.”Those words come straight from the

heart of the blues, and they strike a deepchord. The lyrics are a direct echo of theMississippi Delta blues, summoned fromthe past by McDonald to express the lossesof a whole generation in a destructive war.

It may be a lament by a soldier whohas lost his best friend on the battlefield.Or the tears of wife who has lost her hus-band in the war. Or the sorrow of a fatherand mother for a son who never returnedhome. Or the sense of loss of children leftfatherless for the rest of their lives.

It is an elegy for every combat nursewho tended a soldier’s lonely death inVietnam, and for the sisters and brothers ofveterans who wound up homeless and loston the streets, and disappeared into obliv-ion. It could have been sung by the parentsof students murdered by the National Guardat Kent State and Jackson State.

It’s a ballad for every man and womanscarred irreparably in Vietnam. It’s thelongtime loneliness of the unknown soldier.

“WELCOME HOME”“Welcome Home” is a joyous pop-

rock song with an upbeat melody that cel-ebrates the homecoming of Vietnam vet-erans. Mindful of the many women whoserved in Vietnam, McDonald welcomeshome brothers and sisters alike.

“Welcome home, brother welcome home.Welcome home, sister welcome home.”The song addresses the deep divisions

caused by the war, but appeals for recon-ciliation between all sides of the conflict.

“Some refused to go and some went away to fight.Everyone wants to know

who was wrong and who was right.”But the war is over, and the opposing

sides may never agree, so it’s time to gettogether and say: “Welcome home!”

McDonald was asked to write“Welcome Home” by a Navy veterannamed Alan Bacall who was working on afilm of a large parade held to welcomehome Vietnam veterans. Since the nationhad failed to welcome the soldiers return-ing from the war, it fell to a veteran film-maker and a veteran songwriter to step upand say, “Welcome home.”

SONGS FROM THE SLAUGHTER MILL

In the midst of the Vietnam War,Country Joe recorded War War War, aneloquent set of anti-war songs with musicby McDonald and lyrics from an entirelyunexpected source: the poems of Robert W.Service. McDonald first released the albumin 1971, and then performed it live forrelease on CD in 2007, at a “Peace Eventand Reunion” honoring U.S. Vietnam Warresisters in British Columbia.

Service called his poems “songs fromthe slaughter mill.” The collaborationbetween the “Bard of the Yukon” and theBerkeley acid-rocker is one of the mostpowerful indictments of war ever recorded.

War War War captures the anguish ofsoldiers cut apart by what Service callsthe “ravenous guns” of war, but alsoexpresses the regret of an arms merchantfor profiting from slaughter, and the griefof a father who lost his beloved son on thebattleground. The record culminates in ahellish vision of a platoon of soldiersarisen from the dead to march through aveteran’s day celebration.

In describing his poem cycle, Serviceexpresses in a single poetic couplet thenightmare of war:

“For through it all like horror runsThe red resentment of the guns.”McDonald crafted a diverse set of

melodies to bring out the intense feelings inService’s remarkable poems. It is an albumof wild contrasts — murderous violenceand cruelty, savage laughter at the absurdityof war, and beautifully expressed feelingsof love and compassion.

Robert W. Service had been a well-known author of such light, entertainingverse as “The Cremation of Sam McGee.”But then he served as an ambulance driverand stretcher bearer in World War I andwas awarded three medals for his wartimeservice. His experiences on the brutal bat-tlefields of war, and the death of hisbrother Albert Service in World War I, ledto a considerable deepening of his poetry.

While convalescing from the war,Service wrote Rhymes of a Red Cross

Man, a book of poems that realisticallyportrayed the slaughter and cruel violencehe had witnessed. He captured the heart-break of those who had lost their lovedones to war, as he had lost his brother.

“Women all, hear the call,The pitiless call of War!Look your last on your dearest ones,Brothers and husbands, fathers, sons:Swift they go to the ravenous guns,The gluttonous guns of War.”

“YOUNG FELLOW MY LAD”Perhaps it was the death of his own

brother in war that enabled Service towrite “Young Fellow My Lad,” one of themost heartbreaking expressions of afather’s love and bitter regret over the lossof his son in war. It is a deeply meaning-ful poem for McDonald, because he hasthought and written about the anguish offamilies who have lost a child in war.

When the narrator’s son joins the armyat the age of 17 to fight in World War I,the father’s first burst of pride turns tosadness and fear after his son stops writ-ing. He misses his son unbearably andkeeps a fire in his parlor burning in hopesof his return. McDonald’s poignant vocalis full of empathy for the father’s over-whelming love and sorrow.

The father’s words of farewell to hisson when he first left for war now seemlike a harbinger of loss.

“God bless you and keep you,Young fellow my lad,You’re all of my life, you know.”All too soon, the father receives the

message that all parents of soldiers fearand dread. His son has fallen to “thescreaming shell and the battle hell.” Hewill never come home again.

All that is left to the father are hismemories, and the hopes and dreams heonce held for his son. He tries mightily tofind some saving grace in his son’s death,some sense that he will live on.

“So you’ll live, you’ll live, Young fellow my lad,In the gleam of the evening star,In the wood-note wild And the laugh of the child,In all sweet things that are.”One might search for a very long time,

and look through every song written aboutwar in our lifetime, to find such a movingexpression of the broken-hearted love ofparents who have lost a child in war.

This beautiful song by McDonald andService helps us understand one of themost shattering costs of war — theimmeasurable sense of loss and the per-manent heartache of parents who willnever again see their child return home.

“THE MARCH OF THE DEAD”How else to end this song-cycle but

with “The March of the Dead,” a fever-dream, a nightmare-vision, part prophecyand part ghost story. At first, the songmay seem the delirious ravings of battlefatigue or the hallucinations of hell. But itmay also be a saving grace, with the sol-diers rising from their graves to warnhumanity away from the path of war.

A parade celebrates the return of thenation’s triumphant troops now that thewar is over. But, in truth, the war is notover. It never ended for the vast, hauntedregiment of the dead — “the reeling ranksof ruin,” in Service’s memorable phrase.The Army of the Dead marches into thevictory parade, just as they come march-ing in — unseen and uninvited — to casta pall over every celebration of war.

McDonald’s vocals capture the dreadof that moment when the dead come hometo display the horrifying costs of war.

“The folks were white and stricken, each tongue seemed weighed with lead;Each heart was clutched in hollow hand of ice;And every eye was staring at the horror of the dead,The pity of the men who paid the price.”Florence Nightingale once said that she

could never forget the thousands of sol-diers lying in forgotten graves. RobertService witnessed the same appalling lossof life, including the loss of his ownbrother. He, too, could never forget.

McDonald’s voice sounds hauntedwhen he sings the words that tell us whatwe owe the veterans of our nation’s wars.

“O God, in Thy great mercy, Let us nevermore forgetThe graves they left behind, The bitter graves.”McDonald rescued those eloquent

words from the oblivion of time. Service’spoems would very likely have been lostand forgotten, except that McDonaldreached back in time and rediscoveredthem, and then created music that gavenew life to the lyrics in all their propheticurgency. Words by Robert W. Service.Music by Country Joe McDonald.

“PEACE ON EARTH”Many years after the peace demonstra-

tions of the 1960s had ended, McDonaldwrote “Peace on Earth,” an anti-waranthem he often sang at protests againstU.S. wars of intervention in CentralAmerica and rallies against nuclear arms.

“Tell the leaders of every landOver and over so that they understand Military madness has gone too farIn our world today There is no room for war.”He has never stopped singing for peace.

He has spoken out against war for his entirelifetime, and also has honored the nation’smilitary veterans, even in times of greatnational confusion over their role.

In describing a tribute to veterans atBerkeley’s Vietnam Memorial, he wrote:“There was no anger or hostility, just com-plete agreement that blaming soldiers forwar is like blaming firefighters for fire.”

Bob Dylan once described the chimesof freedom flashing “for each and everyunderdog soldier in the night.” Throughthick and thin, McDonald has demandedthat the underdog soldiers of the night betreated with compassion and justice.

In doing so, he has been an importantexample to the peace movement, and hasexpanded our concept of nonviolence toinclude the front-line soldiers and combatnurses. He has reminded us that an anti-warmovement must find compassion for all thevictims of war, including the ones shippedoff in uniforms to faraway battlefields.

In taking this stand, he is carrying onthe work of his great heroine, FlorenceNightingale, who said, “I stand at the altarof the murdered men and while I live Ifight their cause.”

“I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die.” The second album by Country Joe and the Fish.

from page 6

Country Joe SingingLouder Than the Guns

April 2016ST R E E T SP I R I T8

went on a pilgrimage to England, visitingher home in Embley, her summer home inDerbyshire, and her gravesite at EastWellow. He journeyed to the SelimiyeBarracks Hospital in Scutari (Turkey)where she cared for the victims of theCrimean War.

McDonald finally compiled a compre-hensive archive of her life and times, andcreated a Florence Nightingale website.He recently devoted his entire archive tothe UCSF Nursing School.

A TRIBUTE TO NIGHTINGALE

He also began offering a “Tribute toFlorence Nightingale” that tells her storyin a 50-minute musical and spoken-wordperformance. McDonald greatly admiresNightingale’s compassion and dedicationfor the front-line soldiers wounded, dyingand nearly forgotten.

He literally becomes her voice duringthis tribute, reciting her words with a fieryurgency and performing several inspiringsongs about nursing. His tribute is a reve-lation of her works of mercy.

Florence Nightingale gave comfort tothousands of gravely ill and wounded sol-diers during the Crimean War. In doing so,she created a compassionate new standardfor battlefield medical care. She trained 38volunteer nurses and 15 nuns and begannursing soldiers at Selimiye Barracks inScutari (near Istanbul, Turkey) inNovember 1854. During the first brutalwinter, more than 4,000 soldiers died atScutari from battle wounds, typhus, choleraand dysentery.

In his tribute, McDonald explained thatalong with her pioneering role in combatnursing, Nightingale defied the patriarchyof her day to become a strong advocate forthe independence and rights of women.

“In the end,” McDonald said, “she wasto bring a health and comfort to the sickof the world as had never been seen norconceived of before. And to the idle anddisrespected women of her time, and for-ever after, she brought forth a professionand work and respect and independencenever seen before.”

His admiration for her acts of mercy ledhim to a deepening understanding of herlife. In his “Tribute to FlorenceNightingale,” McDonald said, “Thiswoman who never had children of her ownnow feels the tenderness and protectivenessof a mother for the wounded, maimed anddying soldiers she calls her children.”

That insight runs very deep.Nightingale was one of the rare women inVictorian England who rejected the patri-archy, rejected marriage, and chose acareer of caring for dying soldiers, insteadof having children of her own. She callsthe dying soldiers her own children andMcDonald strives to remind the world ofher acts of love and mercy for her wound-ed “soldier-children,” and her struggle toforge a new path of independence andachievement for women.

Nightingale was not only the soldier’sfriend. She was a fierce warrior on theirbehalf, and McDonald gives voice to her“state of chronic rage” against the militarysystem that had abandoned thousands ofsoldiers to misery and death. With a kindof furious urgency, he recitesNightingale’s description of that “longdreadful winter” in Scutari.

“I am in a state of chronic rage, I whosaw men come down through all thatlong, dreadful winter without any othercovering than a dirty blanket and a pair ofold regimental trousers, when we knewthe stores were bursting with warm cloth-ing. Living skeletons, devoured by ver-min, ulcerated, hopeless, speechless,dying as they wrapped their heads in their

blankets and spoke never a word.”As McDonald pointed out in our inter-

view, Nightingale was known as the sol-dier’s only friend who nursed them whenthey were wounded and sick, and wrote totheir families when they died. No onebefore had done that for the families ofsoldiers slain in battle.

Nightingale said, “I personally tendedtwo thousand such needless deaths in thatterrible winter when the ink froze in myinkwell as I wrote those endless last lettershome, when the patients’ limbs and bootsfroze together and had to be cut apart.”

McDonald’s work in studying FlorenceNightingale’s lifelong acts of mercy andcaregiving may be the culmination of hisown lifelong search for answers to thegreat questions of war and peace.McDonald emphasizes that Nightingaledenounced the system that caused themurder and destruction of countless sol-diers, while offering the world a vision ofcompassion and caregiving.

Nightingale’s vision brings togetherand unites the (seemingly) contrastingopposites of McDonald’s own life: hisfiery challenges to the war machine, onthe one hand, and his great respect andsupport for military veterans, on the other.

On the surface, it may seem contradicto-ry to struggle against the nation’s warswhile supporting and defending the soldiersthat fight and die in them; but the life ofFlorence Nightingale shows us clearly thatshe, too, was in “a state of chronic rage”against the war machine, while supportingthe soldiers caught up in it. It was her life-long work to show that love and mercymust be given to all of us.

In his tribute, just before he sings hissong, “The Lady with the Lamp,”McDonald offers a memorable reflectionon the way Nightingale’s life waschanged forever by the dying soldiers shecould never forget.

“Florence Nightingale said she hadseen hell, and because she had seen hell,she was set apart. Between her and everynormal human pleasure, every normalhuman enjoyment, must stand the wardsof Scutari. She could never forget.”

And then McDonald performs one ofhis finest anti-war songs, and yet it ismuch more than that. It is a warning to allof us — and especially to civilians whohave never seen battlefield casualties —of the terrible price that soldiers must pay.

His song is a beautiful portrayal ofFlorence Nightingale, the Lady with theLamp, carrying her lamp every night asshe walked down a four-mile row of cots18 inches apart, tending to hundreds andhundreds of wounded and dying men.

“First they use usAnd then they throw us away.Only Miss Nightingale Knows the price that we pay,The lady with the lamp.”She spoke of looking so deeply into the

horrors of war that she could never forget.She testified that she was never out of thehospital as she attended thousands ofdeaths that first winter in Scutari.McDonald says, “There were mass casual-ties at a level perhaps never seen before.”

Down those endless lines of bleedingand moaning men walked the Lady withthe Lamp. She is now an eternal part ofthe conscience of humanity, a light thatwill never die.

McDonald has done nearly everythingone person can do to keep alive the memoryof this legendary icon of love and mercy, awoman whose accomplishments are on thesame scale as Mahatma Gandhi andDorothy Day and Martin Luther King, butwho has somehow nearly been forgotten.

His beautiful song enables us to trulysee this heroic woman who brought thelight of mercy into the dark wards ofScutari and, in doing so, kept alive the

flickering and nearly extinguished light ofhumanity during that dreadful winter.

His song captures in simple words —but to breathtaking effect — the interac-tion of “Miss Nightingale” and a dyingsoldier in the lonely hospital ward.

“Excuse me please, a cup of tea,I’ve such a terrible thirst.Would you please come and sit with me,I feel it’s come to the worst.Write my mother that I love her so,I can’t seem to hold the pen.Take this keepsake and send it home,To those I’ll never see again.”How many of those talks did Florence

Nightingale have with the wounded andsick and dying? Two thousand? Fourthousand? How many letters and keep-sakes did she send home to the families ofsoldiers who died in a strange land know-ing they would never again see their lovedones? How could she endure that never-ending burden of sorrow?

McDonald began wondering why shereturned home to England a national hero,yet refused to accept any recognition,refused to grant any interviews, and oftenchose to live in isolation. Alone, she hadborne the anguish and heard the lastwords of countless soldiers who had noother friend in their final moments onearth. No one can ever tell what that didto her heart and mind and soul.

We can only try to dimly comprehendthe price she paid. Yet she willingly paidthat price time and time again, and shewas a friend to the very end, asMcDonald’s song declares.

“She will hold his hand,Stay with him to the end.You know she understands.She’s the soldier’s friend.”The most important value of all, the

deepest and most sacred value, is mercy.Blessed are the merciful. FlorenceNightingale, the lady with the lamp, is ashining icon of mercy for all humanity.

“CLARA BARTON”McDonald also wrote “Clara Barton,”

in honor of the nurse who was known asthe “Angel of the Battlefield” for nursingsoldiers and setting up field hospitals dur-ing the Civil War. In the years after thewar, Barton became the founder of theAmerican Red Cross.

In his song, McDonald describes ClaraBarton as a “professional angel sent fromabove.” He wrote the song, he said,because “I despair over the lack of realwomen as role models.” He wanted histhree daughters to have “some heroes forthem to think about.”

“Every time in the world someone receives first aidYou can thank Clara Barton for the life that is saved.She lived out her life in a world ruled by men.Every time they knocked her down she got back up again.”Civil War veterans told of Clara Barton

with tears in their eyes, McDonald sings,because she “braved the battle” to savetheir lives.

“She never ran from the shot and the shellBringing aid and comfort in the midst of hell.” The nurses written about by Country

Joe McDonald add up to an Angel Band.They offer an entirely different vision ofwartime heroism — a better vision — bybravely bringing mercy and healing intodangerous war zones where medical careis a matter of life and death.

Clara Barton in the Civil War,Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War,Lynda Van Devanter and Rose Sandeckiin the Vietnam War, and countless otherunsung heroines, have offered the light ofmercy and healing in the darkest hoursand the most dangerous places. They allshine on.

“The lady with the lamp.” Florence Nightingale at Scutariwith her lamp at a patient’s bedside in the Crimean War.

Down those endless lines of bleeding and moaning menwalked the Lady with the Lamp. Florence Nightingale is ashining icon of mercy — a light in the darkness of war. Sheis an eternal part of the conscience of humanity.

Lithograph of a paintingby Henrietta Rae.

Songs of Healing byCountry Joe McDonaldfrom page 1

April 2016 ST R E E T SP I R I T 9

Interview by Terry Messman

Street Spirit: You first sang “I FeelLike I’m Fixin’ to Die Rag” on the streetsof Berkeley during the Vietnam War in1965. Fifty years later, you sang it at ananti-nuclear protest at LivermoreLaboratory on Hiroshima Day. Could youhave imagined in 1965 that your songwould still have so much meaning today?

McDonald: Actually, I find the con-cept of 50 years incomprehensible. Butit’s indisputable because I have childrenand some of those children have childrenand I know that the math is right. And Ijust finished an album and the title of it is“50” because it’s 50 years since the firstalbum. It’s called “Goodbye Blues.” Ididn’t die, so there you are. I’m still aliveand I’m still doing something. And filling aneed helps a lot, and it keeps me sane.

Spirit: Your songs really enlivened theHiroshima Day protest at Livermore lastsummer.

McDonald: Well, I’m glad. I’ve donelots of these events. I grew up in a family ofradical socialists, and quite honestly, I real-ly get bored with the theory and speechify-ing of various movements and philosophiesfrom the left. It doesn’t mean I don’t sup-port them. But as an entertainer, I know thatyou can lose your audience. I’ve been doingthis for a long, long time, and I considermyself a morale-booster for these causes. Idon’t do it if I don’t support the cause andthe ideas and the people that are doing it.It’s really quite remarkable what people aredoing in many movements.

I like to support these movements,because they are sometimes not main-stream and no one else is supportingthem, and so I feel an obligation to do it.

As an activist, I like to give a voice andto support people and movements thatdon’t have mainstream support and visi-bility. And I realize that my name has acertain notoriety and that my presence canbe a morale-booster.

Spirit: My wife and I were at yourconcert at the Freight and Salvage inBerkeley back on Nov. 7, 2014, and sup-posedly that was your retirement concert.Yet you’re still singing all over the place.

McDonald: Well that was a weirdmonth. I actually did retire three monthsbefore that. I said, “This is it.” And thenthat month I played five events, all ofwhich were sociopolitical events, and allof which I didn’t get paid any money for.And I thought, “Wow, this is a weirdretirement month.”

Spirit: “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to DieRag” has kind of a perfect Berkeley originstory on the University of California’sSproul Plaza at the height of the antiwarmovement. Is it true that you and BarryMelton recorded an early version of“Fixin’ to Die” and began selling it on atable at Sproul Plaza in 1965?

McDonald: Yes. I moved to Berkeleyin the summer of 1965, after the FreeSpeech Movement. So I came up herefrom southern California and got miracu-lously tapped into the folk music thingthat was happening here at that time. I metBarry Melton at the University ofCalifornia folk festival, and we hit it off. Istarted playing a few of my songs, and heplayed lead guitar. We were a duo.

Then I met some other people, and EDDenson, Mike Beardslee and I startedputting out a little magazine called RagBaby. We put out several issues of RagBaby. It was a biweekly that had musicarticles and schedules of things that werehappening around town, music and danc-

ing and events. It was mostly focused onfolk music and the folk scene.

Then in September of 1965, the publi-cation date came and we didn’t have anycopy for the magazine. You understandthe problem of not having copy! The pub-lication date came and we had nothing,even though there was a lot of stuff hap-pening at that time.

Spirit: Yes, didn’t you release somesongs instead as a musical magazine?

McDonald: I had been approached towrite some music for a play that SaraPayton had written about the VietnamWar. I was working on a song for the playabout three Vietnamese revolutionary sol-diers before a battle, and the lyrics wereexpressing their thoughts before a battle.

I had been in the Navy for three years,and being a veteran always influenced mypoint of view. So I wrote this song called“Who Am I?” a song that’s very lovednow. [“Who Am I” was released on thesecond Country Joe & the Fish album.]

It took two or three days to write thelyrics; it was kind of difficult. But I final-ly got it, and I sat back in my chair and Iwas just happy that I finished it and Istarted strumming on my guitar, and Istrummed what turned into the music forthe chorus of “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ toDie Rag.” And then I started writing and Iwrote the whole song in about 30 minutes.I thought it was a pretty productive day.

Spirit: Pretty productive! You were anunknown street musician and you suddenlycame up with a very moving song, “WhoAm I?” and then the “Fixin’ to Die Rag”that would live on as one of the most impor-tant antiwar anthems of the 1960s.

McDonald: The only reason I couldwrite those lyrics was having grown up ina socialist family. My parents were mem-bers of the Communist Party when I wasborn, but later became disenchanted withthem. And then they became part of theProgressive Party and the left socialistparties that were around.

I read the leftist newspapers and I wasfamiliar with the basic tenets of socialismabout the industrial complex that gener-

ates war. So I was able to write lyricsabout the warmakers that profit from war,and I was able to write a lyric from thepoint of view of the soldier because I hadbeen in the military.

Also, I felt disenchanted from my par-ents, in a way. As far as politics, wedidn’t have a very good relationship, so itwas easy for me to say: “Come on moth-ers throughout the land, pack your boysoff to Vietnam.” And that sarcasm was areally nice thing, and GIs love sarcasm.

The important thing about the “Fixin’to Die Rag” was that it had a new point ofview that did not blame soldiers for war.It just blamed the politicians and itblamed the manufacturers of weapons. Itdidn’t blame the soldiers. Someone whowas in the military could sing the song,and the attitude is, “Whoopee, we’re allgoing to die.”

I had been in Japan in the Navy and ata certain point, I started thinking tomyself, “I want to get the hell out ofhere.” And then realizing, “Wait a minute,I can’t get out of here.” I have this weird(military) haircut, I have no civilianclothes, I have no money. I’d have to geta passport and get on a plane, and I’dnever bought an airline ticket. I was stuck.I was screwed. And I knew that attitude. Itwas: “Oh well, I’m going to finish out myenlistment.” And when they asked me tore-enlist, I said, “No thank you.”

Spirit: Did you find that soldiers liked“Fixin’ to Die Rag” since it mocks WallStreet and the generals, but not the sol-diers shipped to Vietnam?

McDonald: Oh they love it, yeah. Theyreally do like it because it speaks the truth.Most peace songs of the era blamed the sol-diers for the war. As a matter of fact, Iremember the Baez sisters (Joan Baez andMimi Farina) had this poster with themsaying, “Girls say yes to boys who say no”— in the belief that you could just say,“No, I don’t want to be in this war.”

But it was not that easy. As a matter offact, it was almost impossible when youwere in the military. Most civilians — evencivilians on the left, which is really a crime— do not understand the Uniform Code of

Military Justice. It governs you whenyou’re in the military. It’s a contract unlikeany other contract. It can’t really be broken.

And in times of war, they can justshoot you. The grease that makes the mili-tary run is that if you disobey a directorder in times of war, it’s punishable bydeath. They can imprison you. Peoplewere put in Long Binh Jail in SouthVietnam. They were beaten.

Spirit: So it was easy for activists toexpect GIs to resist, but they had littleunderstanding of the risks they faced?

McDonald: I mean, the military is akilling machine, and you have to do yourjob. If you think it’s easy to get out of itonce you’re in it, you’re stupid. As a mat-ter of fact, you can be extended for aslong as they want. So in that sense, it’sreally like being in the Mafia.

When you’re in the military, you knowthat. I don’t know that it’s even possiblefor civilians to understand. But it’s very,very important for civilians to understandthe workings of the military and what themilitary machine entails, and I don’t knowif it will ever happen.

I now know more than I want to know.The situation today is quite a bit better. Butin 1965, I think that most anti-war peoplewere convinced without a doubt that themilitary personnel were responsible for thewar, and if they would only stop fighting,the war would stop. And people demon-strated against soldiers coming back, not asmuch as the right wing would like us tobelieve, but they did.

There were very few people thatembraced soldiers caught in that conun-drum. The American Friends ServiceCommittee was certainly one of them. Butmostly, GIs helped themselves with theGI movement.

Spirit: Do you think there is greaterpublic understanding and support todayfor the soldiers forced to fight the wars?

McDonald: Yes, that has changednow. I don’t think anybody in the countrywould blame an Iraqi war veteran for thewar in Iraq. That’s not happening any

Country Joe McDonald plays for 300,000 people at Woodstock. He said, “They found a guitar, a Yamaha FG 150, and tied arope on it (see the photo) and pushed me on stage. The rest is history.” Photo credit: Jim Marshall

“The important thing about the ‘Fixin’ to Die Rag’ was that it had a new point ofview that did not blame soldiers for war. It just blamed the politicians and itblamed the manufacturers of weapons. It didn’t blame the soldiers. Someone whowas in the military could sing the song.” — Country Joe McDonald

“It Was a Moment of Peace and Love”The Street Spirit Interview with Country Joe McDonald

See Interview with Country Joe page 10

April 2016ST R E E T SP I R I T10

longer.

Spirit: In “Vietnam Veteran StillAlive,” you wrote about a patriotic kidwho went to Vietnam, but after the war,he found that “I’m back home and I’m theenemy.” Do the veterans you’ve talkedwith feel they were blamed for a war theyhad no part in starting?

McDonald: You know, the AmericanLegion did not admit Vietnam veteransduring the war in Vietnam and after thewar in Vietnam — because they “lost thewar.”

Spirit: That was really their feeling —that the soldiers lost the war?

McDonald: That’s right. They werecowards and they lost the war. I’ve metmany, many fathers who died estrangedfrom their sons because they couldn’t stopblaming their sons for either refusing tobe in the draft, or coming back after los-ing the war, and then speaking out againstthe war.

So that’s the right wing and the main-stream of America. But I also have metpeople who were spit on and were calledterrible names. My friend JackMcCloskey worked with VietnamVeterans Against the War and was instru-mental in starting the peer-group counsel-ing that saved so many Vietnam veteransfrom post-traumatic stress horrors.

He always complained because he andRon Kovic and all those Vietnam vets wereput in the vanguard of the peace actions.Once the left wing decided that they werepotent symbols and a force to be reckonedwith as far as the anti-war movement wasconcerned, they put them in the front of themarch. They always put them in the frontof the march, and Jack McCloskey said,“So we always got beat up.” They sacri-ficed them. The country sacrificed them bysending them to Vietnam, and the left wingsacrificed them by putting them in the frontof the marches.

Spirit: Many activists admired theVVAW, the Vietnam Veterans Against theWar, for becoming such a strong part ofthe movement in the late ‘60s and early‘70s. But is that really what they felt, thatthe movement was using them?

McDonald: Yeah, that’s right. Andthat’s why VVAW broke away from thepeace movement and started doing theirown thing. That turned to storefront coun-seling, with vets helping vets. And by theway, it’s because of those people workingtogether that we now have the only treat-ment for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Now, because of Vietnam veterans, wealso understand firefighters, rape sur-vivors — the list is endless. The onlything that works for them is people withcommon traumas talking to each other.

Spirit: Peer counseling for people suf-fering from PTSD?

McDonald: Yes. Peer counseling.

Spirit: How did veterans first developwhat you describe as the only treatmentfor PTSD?

McDonald: They organized storefrontrap groups because the VeteransAdministration would not recognize thisissue. The Diagnostic and StatisticalManual at the time did not define Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder as a mentalcondition. Therefore, you could not gettreatment for PTSD from the VeteransAdministration. You could not get treat-ment anywhere.

Spirit: I think about all the World WarII veterans who suffered what they calledshell shock and battle fatigue back then.Millions were badly damaged by the warand they went untreated and unrecognized.

McDonald: They sent them back lotsof times, when they were shell-shocked.They sent them back.

Spirit: The military sent them back tothe front lines?

McDonald: Back to the front lines.And in World War I, they sent them back.They would burn them with cigarettes andbeat them up and stuff and call them cow-ards. It’s tragic and it’s horrible. It is justso horrible.

Spirit: For a voice of antiwar protest,you express an unusual amount of empa-thy for the experience of soldiers. Doesthat come from being a veteran?

McDonald: I could write the songsthat I write because I was a military veter-an and my parents were socialists. Alsomy mother, Florence McDonald, wasJewish, and her mother was an immigrantfrom Russia, escaping the pogroms of theCzar. And her father was also an immi-grant from Russia.

So by a very early age, I understoodthe Holocaust and the reality of theHolocaust — the death camps, the personwho made sofas out of the skin of Jews.And my mother told me, “When thepogroms come, they’ll get you.”

So I’ve never believed that I was safe,which is another element. I could identifycompletely with soldiers in Vietnam notfeeling safe, surrounded by death, with peo-ple hunting them and wanting to kill them.Because, you know, Nazis wanted to killJews. They wanted to put them in cages andfry them and kill them. So that is imprintedin my mind and is part of my worldview.

Also, my father (Worden McDonald)was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)and lost his job with Pacific Bell, the tele-phone company. During that time, none ofhis comrades came to our aid as a family.

Spirit: HUAC was bad news, but thento not be supported... How did that affect

you as a kid?McDonald: I remember talking to

Toshi Seeger, Pete Seeger’s wife, becauseI think that the left pretty much knowsthat Pete Seeger was investigated as aCommunist by HUAC. We were havingdinner with their daughters, and I said, “Itwas pretty rough on our family when myfather was investigated. I remember it andit was terrible. I was a child and I wasscared.”

And Toshi said, “Well, we had a finetime. Our neighbors stuck right by us.”

And I said, “Well, during those times,as a teenager, it was hard.”

Toshi said, “We didn’t have that prob-lem in our family.”

And Tinya, her daughter, said, “Well,I’m never going to talk about it!”

So these events impact the family, andI was well aware of that. War impacts thefamilies of the veterans. It impacts thecommunity. It impacts the children. And Ifound war and the dynamics of warextremely interesting. And the only way Ican keep from going nuts about what Ilearned about veterans and war is to writemusic about it.

Spirit: On the way to your housetoday, I was listening to your “VietnamExperience” CD. A song about AgentOrange describes a soldier who feelsparanoid and edgy, like there are enemieseverywhere and they’re going to kill him.

McDonald: And they were going tokill him! That’s right!

Spirit: Even the bushes where AgentOrange was sprayed are going to kill him.

McDonald: Not only was the enemytrying to kill him, but his government wastrying to kill him! And not only tried tokill him, but did kill him! One of my bestfriends died of Agent Orange complica-tions.

Spirit: When did you become soinvolved in supporting the rights of veter-ans, and get involved with Swords toPlowshares, the VVAW, and VietnamVeterans of America?

McDonald: I went to an event at theVeterans Memorial Building in Berkeley

in 1981 on the problems of Vietnam vet-erans, attended by movers and shakers inthe movement. I met Jack McCloskeywho was a corpsman with the Marines inVietnam and also was involved in thehealing from the Vietnam War.

I came to that event at the VeteransBuilding as a rock musician, a singer andentertainer supporting veterans, because Iwanted to support them and their cause.

Spirit: You have done a lot of concertsfor the peace movement, but why was itjust as important for you to also supportVietnam veterans?

McDonald: I wanted to support thembecause I felt they were justified.Everything about them was important toknow, and the public needed to know theirstories. It was very important. It involvedthe nation and the world — everything.

But the important thing to me — andfor your question — is that JackMcCloskey and I were standing on thesteps of the Veterans Memorial Building,and as he was talking about a benefitcoming up, he said, “Joe, would you liketo play for this?” Then he said to me,“Joe, you’re a veteran too.”

And that blew my mind. It blew mymind! I internalized it at that moment, andI’m telling you, the next six months of mylife were like an acid trip. Unbelievable.

And I realized that I was guilty, andthat if I had been sent to Vietnam, I wouldhave killed people. I’m not a pacifist andwhat I did was part of a machine. I wasguilty of that.

Spirit: Are you saying you were guiltyof being part of the military machine?

McDonald: Yes, I was part of the mili-tary machine. And I was a veteran. And Ihad feelings about being a veteran. I hadfeelings about how I was treated by thecivilian population. I had feelings about myparents never talking to me about my mili-tary experience. I had feelings about the leftwing using me as an entertainer to drawpeople to their cause. I had many, many,many internalized emotional feelings.

Spirit: Is that because you now real-

The Vietnam Women's Memorial in Washington, D.C., is dedicated to the women who served in the Vietnam War, most ofwhom were nurses. It depicts three uniformed women with a wounded soldier. It was designed by Glenna Goodacre.

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“These women coming home from the Vietnam War, they had no peer group. Theystarted to form their own peer groups. And they never were the same after theirwartime experiences. They were shoved into a horrific, unbelievable experience,and that’s what I wrote about in the song.”

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ized that veteran’s issues were not justabout “them” but about “you” as well?

McDonald: Yes, and I came out ofthat experience whole — because I wasn’twhole before that. There was a part of methat was blocked off. So then I realizedthat these people, veterans, were my com-rades. They were my comrades!

And I’ll tell you, I feel more comfort-able around veterans than any othergroup. It’s a profoundly enlightenedgroup of people, with the knowledge thatthey have. Yeah, I feel comfortable.That’s why I work with those guys.

Spirit: Did you also want to seek bet-ter treatment for vets by society?

McDonald: Well, yeah, in a way, butthey were helping themselves anyway. So Ijust joined the group. I joined the band-wagon. We’d sit around and talk. We toldjokes and had fun together. It was a frater-nal organization and I watched it actuallyevolve and go through different changes.

Spirit: You also toured and did bene-fits for veterans groups, didn’t you?

McDonald: I went around and I playedfor GI coffeehouses, and I played forVietnam veterans’ demonstrations. I playedfor the different organizations: theAmerican Legion, Disabled AmericanVeterans, and Vietnam Veterans ofAmerica. I helped do things at the VietnamMemorial in Washington, D.C., and forwomen who were Vietnam veterans.

Spirit: What events at the VietnamVeterans Memorial in Washington?

McDonald: I played there two times aspart of their ceremonies. I got to know JanScruggs, the guy who built the memorial.He became a friend of mine and we hadsome nice adventures together. I met Dr.Arthur Blank, the head of the V.A. outreachprogram. He just let me stay at his housewhen I was coming to Washington, D.C. Imean, I was embraced by these people.

[Editor: Dr. Arthur Blank, the directorof Vietnam Veteran Counseling Centersrun by the V.A., was very involved in thetreatment of Post-Traumatic StressDisorder among Vietnam veterans.]

Spirit: Why did veterans groupsembrace the writer of such a rebellioussong as Fixin’ to Die Rag?

McDonald: It became loved not onlyby military personnel who were againstthe war, but military personnel who werefor the war. As a matter of fact, the songbecame something that was taught inMarine boot camp in San Diego. I knowthat for a fact. You see, I was appreciatedfor writing “Fixin’ to Die Rag” by the leftwing and by people who like music, therock and roll community. It was some-thing that I did. But with the veterans, itwas something that I am.

So here’s a little story about that.There’s a guy, Phil Butler, and he was inthe Hanoi Hilton, the atrocious prison campin Vietnam that held pilots who were cap-tured. John McCain was held in the HanoiHilton and Phil Butler was there for sevenyears. He became a member of VietnamVeterans of America and I was playing inSan Francisco at one of their events, justsinging some songs there.

Phil Butler came up to me. I almost startcrying just thinking about it, because hesaid, “You know, they would playAmerican music in the compound in HanoiHilton to demoralize us.” Hanoi Hannahwould play music to demoralize Americansin the compound, the prisoners of war.

Spirit: Why would the music demoral-ize them? By making them miss home?

McDonald: Yes, miss home — misshome and think about home. But Phil said,“When they would play ‘Fixin’ to DieRag,’ it would boost our morale and makeus feel good.” Then he said, “I neverdreamed I would live to hear you sing it inperson.” We both started crying and huggedeach other. It was like, “Oh, my God...”

I met a guy who told me his buddydied in his arms in Vietnam from hiswounds and the last words from his lipswere, “Whoopee, we’re all gonna die.”

This is beyond the Billboard chart oftop 10 hits. It’s something really specialand it’s very meaningful to me. And I wasdelighted to find that out, because I neverwould have found it if it hadn’t been forJack McCloskey telling me about being aveteran, and my getting to know all theseguys and doing this stuff with them.

Spirit: I saw in the news that you per-formed at the 20th anniversary of theBerkeley Vietnam War Memorial inNovember. How did you get involved?

McDonald: Recently, I worked to helpfacilitate a Veteran’s Day ceremony for theCity of Berkeley at the Veterans MemorialBuilding. I’ve done quite a few programslike that. We hadn’t had a Veteran’s Dayevent in Berkeley for some years, and itoccurred to me that I could help make thishappen. I was the person who stirred the potand got it going, along with former MayorShirley Dean and council people andDisabled American Veterans. It was a nicehometown Veteran’s Day ceremony. I sang“Fixin’ to Die Rag.”

Spirit: You’ve done benefits for veter-ans groups all over the country.

McDonald: Yeah, I’ve done quite afew events for veterans — left-wing,right-wing, middle-wing, Navy, Army,women and men.

Spirit: You’ve also written far moresongs about war than most people realize.Every song on “Vietnam Experience”speaks out against the horrors of war andgives voice to the soldiers in the field.What led you to make that album?

McDonald: I realized at some point Icould make a whole album of these songs.I had done thematic albums like Thinkingof Woody Guthrie and War War War, butit occurred to me I could do the VietnamExperience album.

The last song of that album was“Welcome Home.” A Navy vet friend ofmine, Alan Bacall, was working on a doc-umentary film of a large tickertape paradeto welcome home Vietnam veterans. The

film was called “Welcome Home,” and heasked me to write the title song.

I said I’d try, and then I realized that inorder to write that song, I had to check myattitude and put it aside.

Spirit: What attitude did you have toset aside?

McDonald: My attitude of: “Fuckthose people, they did this to me. They’rewrong, and these are the right people.These are the good guys and these are thebad guys.”

And that’s how I could write, “Somerefused to go and some went away tofight. Everyone wants to know who waswrong and who was right. But the war isover and we may never agree. Its time toput the deaths to rest and get together andsay, Welcome home!”

So I had to put my attitude on hold andwrite an uplifting song. A friend of minewho is a pro-war, Vietnam War nurse saidthat “Welcome Home” was her favoritesong. She loved that song because there’sno finger-pointing. It’s a morale-boostingwelcome home song for people thatweren’t welcomed home.

It was a pleasure to be a part of that. Ihad to internalize that and I had to feel it.I had to feel that I was resigning from thisargument: Is war right? Is war wrong?

Just as a musician and a Navy veteran, Idon’t know who is responsible for war. It’soccurred to me many, many times to won-der why doesn’t the collective conscious-ness of the people of America say, “No towar. We’re going to dismantle thismachine.” I remember talking to mymother about this. She’s Jewish and shehated the Vietnam War. She said theVietnam veterans were baby killers, youknow.

When I traveled through Germany, Iasked my audiences in Germany at everygig, “Anybody here have family membersin the military?” Not a person raised theirhand. “Anybody have grandparents whowere in the military?” Not a single personraised their hand. Nobody. Then I realizedthat these Nazis were soldiers and theirfamilies were dealing with the stigmatiza-tion — like Vietnam veterans are doing.Who is to blame for that?

Spirit: If the soldiers are not to blamefor war, who is to blame?

McDonald: Who is to blame? Well,like I said in “Fixin’ to Die Rag,” thepolitical leaders and the millionaires andthe military leaders and the governmentsthat make the world go round. The PolPots, the Lyndon Johnsons.

Spirit: And, in the case of Germany,

the Hitlers.McDonald: The Hitlers. And the peo-

ple who supported Hitler. Without hismachine, he would have just been a nutcase on the street corner.

Spirit: In “Vietnam Veteran StillAlive,” you asked the president to wel-come home those who served in Vietnam.What do you think the government shouldhave done to welcome veterans home?

McDonald: Well, I’m not a philoso-pher. I’m just a musician. I mean, I’m justme. But I’d like to make a little compari-son here. What if you’re working for theU.S. Post Office? That’s a governmentjob, right? And what if something hap-pens at work and both your legs are blownoff? What compensation should you getfrom the post office?

But what if you’re in war, working forthe government, and your legs are blownoff? What compensation should you getfrom the government? I think that every-body sort of agrees that the post officeworker should get more than the person inthe military. But I don’t know if that isright. My job is just to throw stuff outthere for you to think about.

With my union upbringing and my left-ist upbringing, let’s say you’re working inthe Teamsters union and a Caterpillartractor runs over your legs. What compen-sation should you get from that? Andwould the union defend you?

But let’s say that you’re in the militaryand you have that same job — they havepeople who drive Caterpillar tractors — andyour legs get run over by the tractor. Whatkind of compensation should you get fromthat? And who is going to speak out in yourdefense? Who? The Joint Chiefs of Staff?Where is your union? A military tribunal?What the fuck. You’re going to go to theVA and get in line. Get in line, man. Theunfairness of it is obvious.

Spirit: Many veterans had to fight forbasic medical care when they returnedhome. I did an article on the hospicemovement and interviewed a Vietnam vet-eran who survived the war, only to die ofHodgkin’s disease from Agent Orange.

McDonald: The Agent Orange story isso sad and so tragic. The Agent Orangeproblems in Vietnam from this defoliantare generational, and from an ecologicalpoint of view, many planetary problemsare caused by dioxin. Back then, dioxinwasn’t recognized as being harmful, andit’s been a struggle. But it just kills youand it causes birth defects in the secondgeneration. It’s a horrible, terrible thing.Some of this stuff is so hard to look at.

[Editor: Agent Orange is made up oftwo herbicides, 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T. The2,4,5-T was contaminated with dioxin,described as “perhaps the most toxic mol-ecule ever synthesized by man” and acause of cancer, Hodgkin’s lymphomaand leukemia, even in the children ofthose exposed to Agent Orange.]

Spirit: You recorded two songs aboutAgent Orange, and also took part in a filmdocumentary about Agent Orange.

McDonald: Yeah, two documentaries.The song, “Vietnam Experience” wasturned into a music video by GreenMountain Post Films, which came out ofan underground news service in NewEngland. I think it is really powerful.

[Editor: The San Francisco Chroniclecalled Vietnam Experience “a gripping mixof wartime and post-war film footage with-out commentary, except for antiwar songsby Country Joe McDonald that is “moreharrowing and more eloquent than all theHollywood movies on the subject.”]

Spirit: Did the second film focus specif-ically on the horror of Agent Orange?

McDonald: Yes, Green Mountain PostFilms made an Agent Orange film called“The Secret Agent.” It was rather shock-

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“War War War” is a collaboration between Robert W. Service and Joe McDonald.

April 2016ST R E E T SP I R I T12

ing. I wrote the music for the film. As partof the film’s score, I recorded MurielHogan’s song, “Agent Orange Song.”She’s a Vietnam Veterans Against theWar person, and she wrote the song, and Ipopularized it, and put it on the albumbecause I realized it was a really powerfulstatement and a really good song.

Spirit: It’s a great song. Didn’t youwrite a second song about Agent Orangeon the Vietnam Experience record?

McDonald: Yes, the song is called“Secret Agent” because Agent Orange isthe secret agent and the film is called SecretAgent. I got the element of paranoia in thissong because you think, “Something is try-ing to kill me. I’m being killed.”

Spirit: Yes, in the song a soldier sur-vives the war but when he comes home, herealizes he was killed in Vietnam by AgentOrange and he didn’t even know.

McDonald: That’s right. That’s right.In the documentary, there are endlessshots of planes spraying the jungle withthis defoliant. There are so many planesspraying Agent Orange for so many milesand miles and miles and miles. And thenthere are shots of GIs with these 50-galloncontainers full of this dioxin which is thedeadliest poison ever created, just spray-ing it as if you’re watering your lawn.

You just look at the film and you think,“Oh my God, I just didn’t realize the mag-nitude of it.” I’ve actually heard that air-craft carriers that were docked off thecoast of Vietnam, sometimes would useempty barrels from Agent Orange andAgent White, and they would fill those upwith water to take to the ship.

Spirit: For the sailors’ drinking water?McDonald: Drinking water and show-

ering water. It’s horrible! It’s horriblestuff! That’s why we sometimes try to bea little sarcastic and smart-asses about it— to keep from crying.

Spirit: At an event on Vietnam veterans,you heard Lynda Van Devanter, who hadbeen a combat nurse in Vietnam, speak outabout women in the military. What did youlearn from her and how did that lead toyour fascination with FlorenceNightingale’s work in combat nursing?

McDonald: I was attending a seminarin Berkeley about the problems ofVietnam veterans in 1981, and Lynda VanDevanter was the only woman speaking.She accused the people in the audience —veteran activists and Vietnam VeteransAgainst the War people — of ignoring therole of women in the military.

I took it to heart. I thought, “Oh myGod, I did ignore it.” I sang, “Come on allyou big strong men, Uncle Sam needsyour help again.” I didn’t acknowledgewomen, although I’d been in the militarymyself, and I knew women were in themilitary. I promised Lynda that I wouldwrite a song about her.

But after I promised that I’d write a songabout her and wartime nursing, I realizedthat I didn’t know anything about it. I had acollection of encyclopedias at home, and Ilooked up nursing and the article mentionedFlorence Nightingale. It said that she wasan upper-class English woman who wentoff to do nursing in the 1850s in theCrimean War, and for the first time broughtwomen in as nurses, and she suffered a ner-vous disorder for the rest of her life afterher experiences in the war.

I had just come back from a seminarwhere we talked about the problems of

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)and I wondered if she had PTSD. So Iwent to Holmes Books in Oakland and Ifound two books: Cecil Woodham-Smith’s definitive biography, titledFlorence Nightingale, and Sir EdwardCook’s two-volume biography, The Lifeof Florence Nightingale.

I read them, and it was so fascinating. Iknew nothing about the Victorian era.And the Crimean War, which was verysimilar to the Vietnam War, was a deba-cle. Everything went wrong in that war.

I learned the story of FlorenceNightingale’s struggle as a woman against apatriarchy that chose to ignore her, and theway she was treated; and her companion-ship that she found with the Sisters ofMercy, the Catholic sisters she workedwith. It was just so fascinating and incredi-ble, and I started collecting stuff about herlife, and about nursing, and studying it.

I amassed quite a big archive abouther, and I just recently donated it to theUCSF Nursing School. It occurred to methat I should put together a tribute toFlorence Nightingale like I did with theWoody Guthrie tribute.

When I was studying about FlorenceNightingale, I learned that her family waspart of the upper class in England. Shewas presented to Queen Victoria, and theywere like the Kennedy family.

She went to the Crimea and livedthrough this trauma, and when she cameback from the war, she refused to beacknowledged in any way for her service.She lived reclusively. I studied the symp-toms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,and one is isolation.

Spirit: You described Post-TraumaticStress Disorder in your song, “The GirlNext Door (Combat Nurse).” It’s a beau-tiful statement about the bravery and sac-rifices of combat nurses in Vietnam. WasLynda Van Devanter the inspiration?

McDonald: Well, Lynda challengedme to recognize women in the VietnamWar, and I promised her I would write asong about it. She was the first woman towrite about her nursing experiences in thewar, and the first woman to come out as anurse and speak out publicly. Lynda saidthat she was the girl next door, so thephrase came from her, and I latched ontothat for the title of my song.

And then I was a friend of RoseSandecki, who was doing Vietnam out-reach for women during the beginning ofthe treatment of Post-Traumatic StressDisorder. I interviewed her and Idescribed how Florence Nightingale camehome and refused to talk to her family, orthe press, or anybody, and just snuckhome in private. And Rose said that’sexactly the same way she came home. Shecame home in secret to her family whenshe came home from the Vietnam War.

[Editor: Rose Sandecki served as anArmy Nurse Captain in Vietnam. Her har-rowing experiences while nursing woundedand dying soldiers led her to become acounselor for soldiers suffering from PTSD.Sandecki was appointed team leader in1981 of a Veterans Administration centerdealing with PTSD.]

Spirit: So you saw similar patterns inthe experiences of combat nurses likeLynda Van Devanter and Rose Sandeckiin Vietnam and Florence Nightingale 100years earlier in the Crimean War?

McDonald: I thought, this is a common-ality here, a common experience that hadn’tbeen publicized or known about —peoplecoming home from the war and being iso-lated, not being able to talk to people, notbeing able to relate to a friend. It was notbeing publicized in any way at that time,with nobody knowing about it.

When Florence Nightingale camehome from the Crimean War, she couldnot relate to her friends any longer. Shehad no peer group. And these women

coming home from the Vietnam War, theyhad no peer group. They started to formtheir own peer groups. And they neverwere the same after their wartime experi-ences. They were shoved into a horrific,unbelievable experience, and that’s what Iwrote about in the song.

Spirit: You captured that in the song.When the combat nurse comes home, herfriends can’t understand why she isn’t funanymore. You sang: “But a vision of thewounded screams inside her brain, andthe girl next door will never be the same.”

McDonald: Yes. The girl next doorwill NEVER be the same! Never! Never!Never! She’ll never be the same!

Spirit: People assume that therapy orthe passage of time or new experiencescan eventually heal most wounds. Why doyou say she’ll never be the same?

McDonald: Because once you havethese experiences in war, you’re nevergoing to be the same. You know, there is amyth that you can recover from these expe-riences. I like to focus on the war experi-ences because it’s a government-sponsoredexperience. It’s a taxpayer-sponsored expe-rience. Collectively, as a nation, we areresponsible for these experiences.

When I was dealing with families whohad lost a loved one, I found that the par-ents somehow got some kind of closure,but the siblings never got closure. Theywere bitter from the moment when Iencountered them. When I set up thatBerkeley memorial, they were still bitterabout it.

Spirit: Why do you think they had thatlong-lasting sadness and anger? Whycouldn’t they find closure?

McDonald: I don’t know what hap-pens when you lose a sibling. What I’msaying about these experiences is that youthink — in the fantasy that you have ofyour life — that you’ll go and have anexperience and then come back home.You’ll go off to college and you’ll comeback home, and you’ll just put it in theplethora of experiences that you have.

But these experiences in war changethe trajectory of your life. You come backhome, and you used to be fun, and nowyou’re no fun anymore.

Spirit: Because you’ve seen too muchand been blasted with traumatic experi-ences that don’t fit into civilian life?

McDonald: Yes, plus the problem ofthe loathing that they experience. Now,thanks to Vietnam veterans collectively,we have peer-group counseling, which isthe only thing that enables you to copewith your experience. But you never getover your experience. Never. Never.

Spirit: Your song says that the nurse iseverybody’s savior but her own. Then itasks, “Who will save her now?”

McDonald: Yes, who will save hernow?

Spirit: Well, who will save her?McDonald: That’s the question. I

don’t know. I’m sort of the Greek chorus.I just ask these questions, and give a voiceto people who don’t have a voice. That’sone of the things I do in that song.

Spirit: Did you feel that Van Devanterand Florence Nightingale had experi-enced so much death and destruction, thatthey suffered the same kind of post-trau-matic stress as a combat soldier?

McDonald: Absolutely! Absolutely!Or the stress of a rape victim. Or anyinexplicable, sudden trauma. You don’tget over being raped.

Spirit: Did Van Devanter write a bookabout her experiences in Vietnam?

McDonald: Yeah, Home BeforeMorning. It’s her autobiography. Greatbook. The first woman to write about this— and there haven’t been a lot. “ChinaBeach,” the TV show, was based on her

book and her experiences in Vietnam.[Editor: Home Before Morning: The

Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam, byLynda Van Devanter, was the basis for theaward-winning TV series, “China Beach,”set in a hospital in the Vietnam War.]

Spirit: Lynda helped so many peoplewith PTSD and Agent Orange ailments,but she herself died in 2002 at the age of55 due to her exposure to Agent Orange.How were you affected by her death?

McDonald: Lynda and I participatedin a few veterans things together and Iliked her very much. She was the personthat sent me on my journey to discoverand explore the life of FlorenceNightingale. Just her presence as a visiblefemale soldier and Vietnam veteranopened doors to other women and intro-duced the public to the reality of womenin the military. Even today, women are forthe most part invisible.

Over the years, I was a witness to herhealth problems getting worse and worse.Like so many others who died of war-related wounds, her death was tragic. Hadshe lived, she would have been such astrong witness to the realities of war fromthe female perspective.

I don’t think anyone picked up whereshe left off. That is, of course, sad. We soneed to de-romanticize war in order tostop it, and she was working towards thatend. For me personally, I felt I lost afriend and comrade and felt so sorry forher daughter and husband.

Her book Home Before Morning abouther life and the Vietnam War, and the col-lection of poems she did with Joan Furey,Visions of War, Dreams of Peace, aremust-reads for anyone who thinks thatthey know about war.

Even after her death, she can continueto open your mind about military womenand war, like she did for me. I really missher very much. Vietnam veterans continueto die every day from war-related woundsand very little is done about it. So sad.

Spirit: Everything you have learnedfrom Lynda Van Devanter and FlorenceNightingale must have even more impactconsidering how many members of yourimmediate family are nurses.

McDonald: My wife Kathy is a laborand delivery nurse and midwife. My nieceis a nurse in San Francisco. My daughterjust became a nurse. My brother retired asa nurse practitioner from Kaiser after 36years. And, of course, my mother wasnamed Florence. Another coincidence inmy life.

Spirit: Why did you become so capti-vated by Nightingale that you made a pil-grimage to England to visit her home andamassed a huge archive about her life?

McDonald: I identified with her a lot.I identified with her being misunderstoodby her family, and being isolated, and theway she was following a call.

Her family had two homes. They had acountry home and their main home. Intheir main home, they had 70 gardeners.Florence had her own French maid herwhole life. She was part of the upperclass. Her family was part of the 20,000families that owned England at that time.

Spirit: So she could have lived in luxuryher entire life, and she was never expectedto work — yet she worked herself toexhaustion in a horrifying war zone.

McDonald: When she went off tostudy nursing in Germany at the age of33, it was the first time in her life that shehad ever dressed herself, and done herown hair. And she went from that into thehell of the Crimean War with 2,000deaths in her first year, and dysentery,bleeding, vomiting, moaning and groan-ing. Then she went on after that to sanitizethe country of India.

Her story is incredible. And the other

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thing that fascinated me is how ignoredshe is. Almost nobody idolizes FlorenceNightingale today — except me.

Spirit: She was one of the most com-passionate leaders the world has known,and the founder of nursing. Her achieve-ments are on the same level as Gandhi orMartin Luther King, yet she’s not honoredas they are.

McDonald: Right! There hasn’t evenbeen a realistic movie made about her.She’s almost forgotten now, even thoughher name is still known. But she was, andis, misunderstood.

Spirit: In your Tribute to FlorenceNightingale, you described her nursing2,000 dying soldiers in the Crimean War.She called them “living skeletons, devouredby vermin.” She says these amazing words:“I stand at the altar of the murdered menand while I live I fight their cause.”

McDonald: Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’tthat gorgeous?

Spirit: It’s really electrifying. And yourecite those words with so much urgency.Why did you want to make those wordscome alive for a modern audience?

McDonald: Oh, I just love it! Becausein the first part of what you just read, shegives you her credentials. She tells youthat she personally knows what she istalking about. She had this personal expe-rience of war that caused a change in herlife and caused her to be transformed.

She said, “I stand at the altar of themurdered men.” I love the word “mur-dered.” MURDERED. These men weremurdered. They didn’t serve their country.They were murdered. They were mur-dered not by the enemy — they were mur-dered by war. They were murdered bytheir government. They were murdered.

And as long as I live, she said, I’ll cham-pion their cause, because they don’t have avoice of their own. And she did it. She didit! For the rest of her life, she did it!

Spirit: Another highly moving momentin your tribute is when she said, “I willnever forget.” You emphasized the impor-tance of those words.

McDonald: Yeah, that’s the thing thatreally got me. And that’s the thing that gotme with the other Vietnam War nurses.They also found out: “I can never forget.”

Those are Florence Nightingale’s ownwords: “I can NEVER forget!” And shewrote it on pieces of paper for the rest ofher life. “I can never forget.” She tookextensive notes, and wrote constantly, justvolumes and volumes of stuff. And shewas always writing: “I can never forget.”

Spirit: What did it mean to her to writethose words over and over and over?

McDonald: It means that she wants toforget it, but she can never forget it. Andthat drove her on, that she could neverforget the experience of war.

Spirit: On one hand, it was a sacredtrust for Nightingale to never forget thesoldiers who had died. But on the other,it’s like she would always be haunted andtraumatized by their deaths.

McDonald: She was haunted! She washaunted! Like everybody is haunted whenthey’re the trauma victims of war. Andeverybody has his or her own capacity.

She attended to 2000 deaths and shecould never forget that. But we don’t knowwhat our own capacity is. We like to think,“Well, I could be a firefighter. I could be asoldier. I could be an emergency medical

technician. I could be a doctor. I could helpsomebody through cancer.” But we don’tknow. We don’t know what our capacity is.

It could be the smallest thing or thelargest thing. It can be one death or twodeaths or one frightening thing. But thereare things that happen in your life that causeyou to say: “I can never forget.”

Spirit: You said that after the CrimeanWar, she carried that nervous conditionwith her until she died at the age of 90.

McDonald: There are a lot of theoriesabout it. One is that she suffered frombrucellosis (or Crimean fever), and maybeshe did. Maybe she had lead poisoning ormercury poisoning. But part of the mix,the gestalt that made up FlorenceNightingale, was her war experiences.

The other fascinating thing aboutFlorence Nightingale was that in an agewhen women did not have careers, shechose to have a career. She chose to neverget married. She decided she didn’t want todo that. She was going to have a career.

Spirit: In many ways, she was awoman who opened doors.

McDonald: That’s right. She walkedthat road. She broke those doors down.She is very interesting.

Spirit: The thread that runs throughnearly everything you’ve said in this inter-view is the terrible damage caused by war— combat nurses who can never forget, vet-erans who go on suffering long after thewar is over, families who were blown apartjust as much as their soldier sons wereblown apart. What does all this have to sayto governmental leaders who wage warsthat will cause permanent damage and suf-fering to countless people?

McDonald: I love Kurt Vonnegut, andhe wrote a book called The Sirens ofTitan. It’s a really great book. I’ve read itso many times. He talks about theTralfamadorians who would think in theform of a cloud above their planet. Acloud would form above their planet andall their consciousnesses would mergeinto one and they would make decisions.

[Editor: The Tralfamadorians alsoappear in Slaughterhouse-Five whereVonnegut writes: “All moments, past, pre-

sent and future, always have existed,always will exist. The Tralfamadorianscan look at all the different moments justthe way we can look at a stretch of theRocky Mountains, for instance. They cansee how permanent all the moments are,and they can look at any moment thatinterests them.”]

We don’t have such a thing. So inmaking decisions about war, we havegovernmental bodies. We have the rule oflaw. We have customs and ethnicities andgrudges that go back for generations thatprevent us from merging our conscious-ness together. We do have a collectiveconsciousness of being a planet now,because we’ve seen pictures taken fromouter space that show we are a planet, andwe are on a sphere, and we are a specieson this planet of sapient beings.

But we haven’t developed the ability tocommunicate collectively. So withoutthat, we’re at a loss. We’re at a loss andwe don’t know what to do. How do wedecide these great questions of war andpeace? What can we do? I don’t know.

In my own consciousness, there are thecivilians, and then there are the veterans;there are the anti-war people and the pro-war people. What we need is a dialogue,but how do we have a dialogue? How dowe have a collective dialogue with sevenbillion people? Seven billion people! Butwe need to have a dialogue. Don’t weneed a dialogue to decide these things?

Spirit: Albert Einstein looked to inter-national law and the abolition of warcrimes and the strengthening of theUnited Nations. He called for every indi-vidual to refuse to participate in war, andcalled for governments to abolishweapons of mass destruction.

McDonald: But that’s only a piece ofit. For some reason, I’ve been obsessedover the past couple years with how youuse language to describe the totality ofwhat surrounds us on this planet. I don’tmean the horizons. I don’t mean thenorthern hemisphere or the southernhemisphere, but the totality of everythingthat surrounds us. What language do wehave for that? We don’t have a language.But we need to be able to conceive of and

describe and communicate everything thatexists. All religions, all thoughts, allpoints of view.

We need to get together and make adecision: Are we going to continue doingthis destructive dance that we do? Maybewe’ll decide yes. Maybe we’ll decide no.But how do we even begin?

There was once this concept that theUnited Nations would do that. But weused to play this game when you were akid when you had to form a circle and youwould whisper something in someone’sear, and they’d whisper in another per-son’s ear and it goes around the circle andby the time it gets around, it’s a differentmessage. Sometimes with the translationsthat take place at the United Nations, youwonder what the hell is going on.

During the Crimean War there was theCharge of the Light Brigade where Lucanwrote a little message to this other guyCardigan and they misinterpreted it andthey charged into heavy artillery and manywere killed. Miscommunication. None of usare dealing with a full deck. I’m looking forthe full deck. [laughs] Where is the fulldeck? Anybody got a full deck?

Spirit: Empathy is one crucial part ofunderstanding others. On the institutionallevel, there is international law that appliesto all nations. On the person-to-personlevel, there is empathy where you reallybegin to understand others. Like when ananti-war activist begins to understand a lit-tle about what a veteran has gone through.And that changes both of them.

McDonald: Yeah! That was the fasci-nation with me for the veterans and theirfamilies and the women in the militaryand the combat nurses. It’s INCLUSIVE,not exclusive.

Spirit: And when you were talkingabout that common language, I was think-ing of John Lennon’s first line in “I AmThe Walrus.” “I am he as you are he andyou are me and we are all together.”

McDonald: Right! Yeah. Yeah.

Spirit: So I just solved it. You just needto listen to the Beatles more often. [bothlaugh] Speaking of songs, “Lady with theLamp” is such a beautiful song aboutFlorence Nightingale. You describe howshe nurses soldiers dying thousands ofmiles from home. “She will hold his hand,stay with him to the end. You know sheunderstands, she’s the soldier’s friend.”

McDonald: Yes, that’s what theycalled her — they called her the soldier’sfriend. The soldiers hadn’t had a friendbefore. As a matter of fact, FlorenceNightingale is the person who startedcharting. In other words, when she had apatient, she wrote their names down andwhat happened to them. Because beforeFlorence Nightingale, when the war wasover and the ships came back, the familiesstood on the dock and waited to see iftheir loved ones came off the ship.

Spirit: That was the only way theyknew the fate of their loved ones?

McDonald: See, that’s one of the terri-ble things about war. You can becomemissing in action. She started that wholething of keeping records, which is a grislytask.

Spirit: Before that, people would oftenjust disappear into death, and their fami-lies would always wonder?

McDonald: Yeah, if you were just aworking-class grunt in the army, nobodyknew what happened to you. Nobody everknew. If you were upper class, one of theofficers, it was different. But the lowerclasses are the nameless ones.

So back then, if you wanted to find outif your friend died in the war, your lovedone, nobody’s keeping their records. ButFlorence Nightingale kept records, andthat’s one reason they called her “the sol-

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Florence Nightingale Commemorative Statue, London Road, Derby.

April 2016ST R E E T SP I R I T14

dier’s friend.” Because nobody was thesoldier’s friend before then.

Spirit: In your song, a dying soldierasks Nightingale to write to his motherand send a keepsake home “to those I’llnever see again.”

McDonald: Right, she literally did that— the first time it had ever been done.

Spirit: Even while nursing hundreds ofdying soldiers, she’d write to their fami-lies and send a keepsake or photo?

McDonald: That’s right — and at herown expense. She personally did that.

Spirit: Can you describe your pilgrim-age to Florence Nightingale’s home inEngland? And what were your feelingswhen you visited her gravesite?

McDonald: Oh wow, it was like a fan-tasy. It was like a dream of mine because Ihad been studying her life for years, actu-ally, and I never dreamed that I would beable to go to her burial site.

It just so happened that I made a con-nection with an ex-nurse and her husbandwho had a Nightingale Society. They goover there every year and do this com-memorative Florence Nightingale thingon her birthday. I happened to be going toEngland at the same time for some gigs,and they took me over there to that littleparish church where she’s buried.

Oh my God, it was fantastic. It was amissing piece in my journey throughFlorence Nightingale’s life because I hadbeen to some other places, and that was theone place that I hadn’t been. And throughthem, I got to attend the commemorativeceremony that happens there every year inWestminster Abbey, too. So it was amaz-ing, really. It was just incredible.

Spirit: You had already done a lot ofresearch into her life. How did the tripchange your picture of her life and work?

McDonald: It just really brought herlife down to earth, rather than it being afantasy in a book. I had been just lookingat pictures for a number of years. I got toactually see her gravesite. I got to go intothat church. I got to have a feel for whather life was actually like. We went to themain building, the main mansion, that shelived in, which is now a boy’s school. Itwas open on that day to the public.

I got to walk on the grounds that I hadonly seen pictures of. I got to stand underthe tree where she supposedly got her callfrom God. All these things just had beenpretty abstract to me, but I was fascinatedwith them, and then I got to physically beright there. It was incredible. It was alsoincredible that it all fell together like thaton that trip. It was just in a few days thatall of that stuff happened to me. And Itook some pictures of it and got to put itup on my website of her life. It was amaz-ing. You know, I’m a rabid fan of hers.

Spirit: It’s interesting that her life storyhas given you so much inspiration. She hastaught you a lot about the effects of war onsoldiers forced into battle.

McDonald: I don’t exactly know whyI find Florence Nightingale so interesting.She recognized the dehumanizing effectsof war on the warriors. She talks of theeffect that war has on the soldiers, makingthem drink and be sadistic.

She came to tend to their physicalwounds and, in that, she was different fromthe way the military treated them. She wascaring and kind. The old soldiers accusedher of “spoiling the brutes.” She tended totheir last wishes and desires before death.

No one had done that before. Then shenoted the psychological and emotionaleffect war had on their personalities anddecided to do something about it.

On her own dime, she built little cafesand got people to give lessons to the sol-diers and provided writing materials forthem to write home. And on her own, shedeveloped a system so that they couldsend money home to their families. In thatsense, she was the inventor of the USOwith reading rooms, educational coursesand savings plans.

She did this over 150 years ago. Andtoday we live in a world of warrior wor-ship. We don’t hate and disrespect sol-diers any more, but we place them on apedestal that dehumanizes them, I think.So I just think it is important to examinewar from every angle possible.

And I do believe that war is caused bycivilians, not soldiers. So anything we cando to see war from the point of view of sol-diers is important. Because after all, they donot exist alone like robots or projections ofour minds. They are our family membersand when they feel something, we feel it.When they dysfunction, we dysfunction.

The cost is huge, not only in physicalterms, but in emotional and spiritualterms. I think that if we open up to see it,we have no choice but to stop doing it ordie. Thanks for getting me to think aboutall this. It is a challenge to put into words.I, of course, mostly put things into song.

COUNTRY JOE AND THE FISH

Spirit: Country Joe and the Fish weredeeply involved in the counterculture of theBay Area. That period is now seen inalmost mythic terms as a utopian and revo-lutionary time. What was it like for you tobe part of the so-called Aquarian Age?

McDonald: It was important for me tobe part of the Aquarian Age. Up until thenin my life, I had never felt a real part ofsomething like the Aquarian Age.

We were collectively something. Idon’t know how to describe it, except thatit was magical. It was like all at the sametime, amazing stuff happened in Paris,stuff happened in London, stuff happenedin San Francisco and BOOM!

Everybody agreed on the samepremise: peace and love. It was a momentof peace and love. And it really happened.I don’t know how or why it happened. Butit was a wonderful thing to happen.

It was so great to be called a hippie! Iwanted to be a hippie my whole life. Andthere I was — a hippie! And I’m still ahippie. Peace and love.

Spirit: In The Year of the YoungRebels, Stephen Spender described thesame spirit of freedom in Mexico, Paris,London, Czechoslovakia and the U.S. Thespirit of peace and love was happening allover the world in 1968.

McDonald: Yeah! A friend of mine,Fito de la Parra, who plays drums withCanned Heat, grew up in Mexico. Hemade a documentary of the hippie peace-and-love thing in Mexico and what hap-pened in Mexico City with these little cof-feehouses. These people started rockbands and then they had their littleWoodstock thing out in the country wherethousands of people came. I’ve seenfootage of it. And right after that, the gov-ernment shut down every single radio sta-tion and club, and it took 20 years forrock and roll in Mexico to come back.

Spirit: The government saw the musicas a threat.

McDonald: I don’t know why, butrock and roll is a threat to the leaders. Youknow, it’s illegal to have a rock band inIran. You can’t. You’ll get arrested.We’re lucky to be in America. If I wasn’tin America, I would have been in prisonor killed like Joe Hill (the IWW unionactivist and songwriter).

Spirit: There is a kind of lazy revision-

ism that mocks the 1960s counterculture.But there was a great outpouring of free-dom and imagination and rebellion — anuprising of peace and love. A whole gen-eration felt that.

McDonald: I really agree with all ofthe stuff that you’re saying. And it wasaccessible to everyone. It was completelydemocratic. Total, pure democracy. Wecalled them hippies. Anybody couldbecome a hippie just by being a hippie.

I could be something that I’d wanted tobe my whole life. I felt free. I felt part of itall. I felt safe. I was part of something and Ifelt useful. I felt like I had found a niche,something that I could do. I had a talent —I could make music. I could be a part of itall. And it was fun. It was a lot of fun.

The other thing about being a hippiethat was really great was that soon after itbegan in 1967, everyone in the main-stream began to hate hippies. And thatmade it even more exciting.

Spirit: Why did you feel it was a goodthing to be hated by the mainstream?

McDonald: Because we were the anti-heroes. If they hated us — all thesesquares and fascists and Nazis and themainstream people that had let us alldown — if they hated us just because wewere having fun, then it had to be great.

We could be pretend heroes, and soon,Marvel Comics began coming out with allthese superheroes — the birth ofSpiderman, X-Men and all that stuff.

Spirit: Long-haired and mystic heroeslike Dr. Strange, Thor, Silver Surfer.

McDonald: Yeah, Dr. Strange wasgreat! He had an astral projection of hisspirit. I mean, wow, how cool was that?And with LSD you could imagine havingastral projection yourself. And it was fun.That was the missing element with all theother stuff in my life. It was pure, unadul-terated fun.

Spirit: You had good timing in movingto Berkeley in 1965 right when the wholecounterculture was about to take off.

McDonald: Being a hippie was some-thing that I had dreamed of, because itwas something I could turn myself into. Ihad tried a lot of things before which werenot very satisfying. And being a hippiewas easy to do, because you could justwear cheap clothes from the second-handshops, or anything that you wanted.

Also, it had that peace and love vibe toit, which was free from politics, and fromdogmatism and from what I considered the-oretical bullshit. I hadn’t found that free-dom before in all the traditional things I hadexplored from the military and high schooland the left-wing politics from my family.

Spirit: What was it like for CountryJoe and the Fish to play at the FillmoreAuditorium and the Avalon Ballroom inthe glory days of psychedelic music?

McDonald: We played a lot at theFillmore and the Avalon starting in 1967.People would do these crazy psychedelicdances. There would usually be three bandsplaying two sets each. So it was six sets ofmusic during the night. And there was justone dressing room, so all the guitar casesand everything would be crammed in there.Everybody was just mingling together.There was no hierarchy of the top-billedgroup and the bottom of the bill, or “We’remore famous than you.”

I used to stand in front, next to thestage, right at Jerry Garcia’s feet, watch-ing his hands really closely because he dida really neat thing when he played theguitar that I wanted to figure out. Andeventually I did figure it out. It was theway he bent the guitar strings.

Spirit: Did the new music and the newcounterculture make you feel like youwere now part of a community?

McDonald: We were part of a commu-nity. We were just across the Bay inBerkeley, and we did find our way into

San Francisco, just because the phonerang. Things happened really fast in 1966,‘67 and ‘68 — unbelievably fast. So webecame part of that community, and thatwas really nice because I think prettymuch everybody who was a part of thatcommunity didn’t feel like they were apart of the American society.

We had been rejected in one way oranother by that society, and we found thisnew identity as a hippie, and a lifestylethat was disdained by the establishment.And we created a music that was dis-dained by the establishment.

Everybody brought their own uniquekind of music and then they began strug-gling with the definition of it. Was it WestCoast rock? Was it psychedelic music?What the heck was it? [laughs]

The music industry could not figure outwhat the hell it was. Then very quickly,they figured out that they had found a goldmine and they began signing up bands, andmaking albums and putting it out there. Theindustry wanted to make money off themusic. But we never thought about money— never. Country Joe and the Fish neverthought about money. The Grateful Deadprobably never thought about money.

Spirit: Still, the San Francisco soundbecame huge and vastly influential, seem-ingly overnight.

McDonald: Oh, it exploded nationallyand internationally, and it all happened onthe West Coast. And most of it happenedhere in the San Francisco Bay Area. Itwas magic. It was really magic.

Spirit: Why did it feel like magic?McDonald: Because you couldn’t

explain why it happened. I think the BayArea has something that allows things tohappen. The Gold Rush, beatniks, thelongshoremen’s union. Every now andthen, something explodes in the Bay Areaand then people begin coming to the BayArea. The Steve Miller Band came to theBay Area and the Bay Area had it all. Itwas fun and magic and unpretentious.

Spirit: The Monterey InternationalPop Festival in 1967 was a peak momentfor the counterculture. Country Joe andthe Fish are shown playing in D.A.Pennebaker’s film, Monterey Pop. Whatwas it like to play at Monterey?

McDonald: Well, I played at Montereywith the Fish as part of the group, but I alsohad my own separate experience. I wan-dered around and I watched a lot of theconcert. I took Owsley’s new inventioncalled STP. He was passing it out and Itook a tab and a half of that and I felt like Iwas walking through a Monet painting thewhole entire time. I remember being on thebeach yelling to porpoises and having themlook back at me.

I watched pretty much the whole showand I had a good time. You know, I enjoyedbeing part of the Aquarian Age and thoseincredible moments of musical historywhen just all that stuff was happening —like the best potluck you’ve ever attendedin your life. It was unbelievable.

I was right there in the front row whenJimi Hendrix played and set his guitar onfire with some lighter fluid. I’d never seena person do that. I also saw The Who playand they were really great, but the amaz-ing thing was that they smashed theirinstruments. I couldn’t understand thatbecause we had saved up to buy ourinstruments. I was a poor kid when I wasgrowing up so I couldn’t understand whyanybody would smash their instruments.

Otis Redding was incredible. Oh myGod, he was so good! Those are the high-lights that I remember and, of course,Janis Joplin.

Spirit: I thought Janis doing “Ball andChain” at Monterey was amazing.

McDonald: Yeah, I thought she wasgood. She obviously mesmerized the

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April 2016 ST R E E T SP I R I T 15

audience and they were just all gaga overher. It was a great show.

We had been boyfriend-girlfriend fortwo or three months in the Haight-Ashburybefore Monterey. We were breaking up atthe time of Monterey. Before Montereyhappened, I was there when Chet Helmsintroduced her at the Avalon Ballroom inSan Francisco when she first hooked upwith Big Brother and the HoldingCompany. I loved her with Big Brother andthe Holding Company. I thought that was agreat rock and roll band.

Spirit: I did too. Some critics startedputting them down as excessive, and theywere underrated, but I thought Big Brotherwas a great band and worked well withJanis. You wrote a moving song called“Janis.” How did that song come about?

McDonald: When I broke up withJanis, she said, “Would you write a songfor me before you get too far away fromme?” So I was up in Vancouver and Iplayed a little thing on my guitar and Iquickly wrote the lyrics and the song,“Janis.” I liked the song.

Spirit: It’s a really pretty song. Youwrote, “Into my life on waves of electricalsound and flashing light she came.”

McDonald: Yeah, people really likedthe song. And I do too. I think it’s reallynice.

Spirit: What was Janis like in person?McDonald: Well, Janis was really

obsessed with turning herself into JanisJoplin and she was very aggressive. Shewanted to be Otis Redding. She had heardOtis and she really loved Otis Reddingand she wanted to be Otis Redding.

She really wanted approval. She waskind of an ordinary, down-home girl, youknow, and she was very, very smart. Veryaggressive and didn’t want anything to dowith politics. She said, “I don’t need no-fucking-body telling me nothing, man.”

Spirit: Speaking of historic festivals,there’s that amazing moment atWoodstock when you were able to gethundreds of thousands to join you insinging to stop the Vietnam War. How didyou end up all alone on the Woodstockstage, without the rest of the Fish, singingto that massive audience?

McDonald: By the time Country Joeand the Fish came to Woodstock, the bandwas pretty much falling apart. Three ofthe original members were gone and wehad new members. Chicken Hirsh, ourdrummer, had just quit the band abruptly,less than two months before that. I wasreally not liking the band anymore.

The magic that we had in the originalarrangements — the complicated, wonder-ful, psychedelic songs that we were playingon the first album — could not even beplayed by this new band. We were makingmoney, but we were on the treadmill of aroad band going out and playing gigs. I feltreally estranged from the band.

But I have always loved playing out-doors and I loved these festivals. We hadplayed the Monterey Festival and I lovedwatching all the other bands because I justlove music and I loved this new music.

So I went to Woodstock on Thursdaywithout the band. The band came onFriday. I went out to the stage to see whatwas happening because I loved watchingthe production get going before the bandscome, and then the bands setting up andplaying. I love the whole gestalt of a rockshow. On the second day, I was there

early when Santana was supposed to goon. I was hanging around the stage justdigging the scene, and Santana couldn’tget through because of the traffic.

So Bill Belmont, the guy who was ourroad manager, was kind of moonlightingon the production staff of Woodstock,with John Morris who was the productioncoordinator. They were upset becausethey couldn’t put Santana on as the nextact. So I was sitting on the stage and Johnand Bill came over and said, “How wouldyou like to start your solo career?” I said,“What the hell are you talking about?”They told me, “Just go out and play somestuff until Santana gets here.”

I didn’t really want to do it, so I toldthem I didn’t have a guitar. They wentand found a cheap, really great Yamahaguitar, a Yamaha FG 150, and they gave itto me. I was looking for excuses then, so Isaid, “I don’t have a guitar strap.” So BillBelmont cut a piece of rope off the rig-ging and tied it to the guitar and theypushed me out on stage.

I didn’t know what the hell to do, so Isang a couple country-western songs offmy album and I sang a couple other songsfrom my repertoire, and nobody in theaudience was paying any attention to me.

Spirit: What was it like to be suddenlyand unexpectedly pushed out on stagebefore hundreds of thousands of people?

McDonald: You know, I’ve alwaysfelt more comfortable on stage than offstage, so I was used to it and I was prettyrelaxed about it. But my mind was blownwhen I came there on Friday and walkedup on stage and saw the audience. Thatwas incredible. It was so exciting.

It was so huge. But when I sang, noone was paying any attention to me at all.It was like a giant family picnic out there.But I decided to do the “Fish Cheer” and“Fixin’ to Die Rag” and I started feeling alittle bit excited about it.

Spirit: A little excited? You yelled ateveryone at Woodstock to start singingagainst the war, and all of a sudden hun-dreds of thousands of people explodedinto a massive antiwar outcry.

McDonald: I went up to the micro-phone and I just yelled, “Give me an F!”And they all stopped talking to each otherand looked at me and yelled, “F!” And Ithought, “Oh boy, here we go.”

So I got pretty brave because they didthe whole Fish Cheer with me, and then Iwas singing the song, “I Feel Like I’mFixin’ to Die Rag.” I could see that thecrowd seemed to be having a good timeand they started to stand up, so I got reallybrave. I started haranguing them to singlouder, because if you want to stop thewar you have to sing louder than that.

I went on and finished the song andthey were all standing up and jumping upand down — and there you go. But Ididn’t know they were making a movie ofit. I didn’t even notice that.

Spirit: What did you think the first timeyou watched the movie and saw “Fixin’ toDie Rag” with the bouncing ball to thelyrics and a huge crowd singing and cheer-ing your anti-war message?

McDonald: Well, I was delighted. Youknow, Michael Wadleigh, the director, haddrawn upon documentary film crews to puttogether his film crew to shoot Woodstockin 16 millimeter film. All of those crewswere people who had been working onsociopolitical documentaries up to the timeof Woodstock, and Michael himself hadroots in sociopolitical documentaries andsocial movements in America.

So he really jumped onto putting in“Fixin’ to Die Rag” as being a sociopoliti-cal statement — a contemporary state-ment about the Vietnam War, becausegenerally speaking, no one was making apolitical statement in the film. Joan Baeztalked about her husband being in jail as a

draft resister, and the Richie Havens song“Freedom” seems to have overtones ofbeing political, but really nobody wasmaking a political statement.

So Michael Wadleigh really liked thatsong, and he called me about threemonths after the festival to go down toL.A. We sat in the projection roomtogether, just me and him, and he showedme what you see in the Woodstock film ofme singing with the bouncing ball.

I couldn’t believe it. It was really cool.He said, “How do you like it?” And I said,“Whoa, that’s great.” I had no idea itwould change my life.

Spirit: How did it change your life?McDonald: When I walked off stage,

John Morris said into the microphone,“That was Country Joe McDonald.” So itestablished me as Country Joe McDonaldand that identity of making a statementabout the Vietnam War. It allowed me togo on and have a solo career, and travelall over the world and make records andhave bands.

It also enabled me to be somebodyVietnam veterans could look to, and inhearing that song, to cope and deal withthe insanity of the Vietnam War. Becausethe song does not say anything bad aboutsoldiers. It just makes a statement aboutthe war and the social and political rootsof the war and how it came to be.

Just recently, I got asked by BobSantelli, who is the executive director ofthe Grammy Museum in L.A. and alsoworked at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fameand Museum in Cleveland, to be a partici-pant at a symposium on the Vietnam Warin Austin, Texas. [Editor: The VietnamWar Summit will be held April 26-28 atthe LBJ Presidential Library.]

There’s one session called “One, Two,Three: What Are We Fighting For? Thesoundtrack of the Vietnam War, in countryand at home.” I will be there, being inter-viewed by Bob Santelli and singing somesongs. I never dreamed that would happen.

Spirit: Singing those words — “one,two, three, what are we fighting for” —took you from a street corner in Berkeleyto Woodstock and now, all the way to theVietnam War summit at the LBJ Library.

McDonald: Well, especially becausein 1965, when we made that little EP, that7 inch record in the jug-band style ofmusic, it had “I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ toDie Rag” on it. But it also had anothersong called “Superbird,” which was aboutLyndon Baines Johnson.

I joked with Bob and I said maybe I’llsing “Superbird.” I think he got a little bitnervous because it has that chorus:“We’re going to send you back to Texasto work on your ranch.”

All that never, never would have hap-pened if it hadn’t been for Woodstock. Sothere you go!

*** *** *** *** ***The second installment of the Street

Spirit interview with Country Joe McDonaldwill appear in the June issue.

Interview withCountry JoeMcDonaldfrom page 14

Country Joe McDonald sings “Fixin’ to Die” at Woodstock. Benno Friedman photo

“Everybody agreed on the same premise: peace andlove. It was a moment of peace and love. And it reallyhappened. I don’t know how or why it happened. Butit was a wonderful thing to happen.”

Joe McDonald joined the Navy at 17.

April 2016ST R E E T SP I R I T16

Film review by Carol Denney

When Amir Soltani first movedonto a quiet street in Oaklandhe noticed a parade of people

coming by periodically to check thegarbage. One after another throughout theday they would peer into the bins lookingfor redeemable bottles and cans.

The earliest person might find a few.Those who came later in the day wouldfind less, or nothing, and Soltani began towant to talk to the recyclers, if only to tellthem someone else had gotten there firstand nothing was left.

The ingenuity and determination of therecyclers intrigued him. The lack of com-munication between householders inOakland casually tossing awayredeemable materials, while people madea living by gathering them for recycling,left him feeling disturbed and wanting toaddress the disconnection.

Eight years later, the film DogtownRedemption was born, through the work ofco-directors Amir Soltani and ChihiroWimbush, a grant from the Berkeley FilmFoundation, and a list of contributors solarge it took several minutes for them toscroll by at the end of the film’s East Bayscreening on March 1st at the new ParkwayTheater on 24th Street in Oakland.

The applause for the film in this com-fortable, well-appointed new theaterswelled and sustained when it was overand the principals gathered for questions.It began with a broad shot of the sparklingview of West Oakland from the hills andthen dialed in to the tender detail of thelives of recyclers themselves and AllianceRecycling’s dogged effort to continue itsover 30 years of legal recycling operationsfor its own sake, the environment’s sake,and the sake of the hundreds who dependon recycling for income.

“We started making a film aboutpoverty,” stated Soltani during the ques-tion-and-answer period after the film.“We ended up making a film about love.”

The poverty of the recyclers profiled inthe film is quietly illustrated as peoplealternately find or lose housing and shel-ter options, find or lose loving relation-ships with family, friends, and lovers, andget a handle on their health and hope.

The filmmakers spent years on thestreet establishing trust with DogtownRedemption’s main subjects, recyclersgiven intimate, respectful portraits. Thedespair of former Polkacide drummerMiss Hayok Kay’s visit to a lost love’sgravesite is given its pure gravity, and thespontaneous dance she does with a friendin a parking lot to music they sing togeth-er is treated with loving dignity. The cam-era itself seems to have completely disap-peared early in the film.

But the powerful portrait of poverty inthis film is almost secondary to the por-trait of the extremely hard work it is tomake a living from recycling. If you everwondered how a recycling facility works,or how far people walk in a day for mate-rials, how they balance the carts, or howmuch the materials weigh or are worth,this film will not only answer your ques-tions from the mouths of the recyclersthemselves, but it will knock you flat withthe recognition that few jobs could beharder than this one.

Few jobs require earlier hours, moredetermination, more knowledge, and moreliteral strength. Alliance Recycling, overits years in business, has saved an estimat-ed 1,735,258 gallons of oil and an esti-mated 8,712,078 gallons of water.Neighborhood recyclers, according toAlliance Recycling, “collectively salvageover 15,000 tons of materials each yearthat would otherwise go to landfills.”1

The community of people that doesthis work is black, white, Asian, and

Hispanic. It is young, old, addicted,healthy, as capable and as culpable as anyof us are in any housed community.

The intersection of lives, on track andoff, weaves through our experience of therecyclers lives, making us inevitably feellike part of the fabric. We are the recy-clers at times, heroically ploughing theEast Bay’s rough streets, divertingreusable materials from the waste stream.We are the neighbors at times, depressedby the daily sight of poverty.

The church’s outreach helps formerrecycler Landon Goodwin’s path to stabil-ity, marriage, and steady employment.Teachers at a martial arts dojo help recy-cler Jason Witt recognize and affirm hisown innate powers of balance and disci-pline without which, he stated, “I knowI’d be dead by now.”

An outreach group helps Miss Kayacquire the identification card she needs toapply for assistance, which she briefly suc-ceeds in doing before despair takes her backto the street, where she is victimized by anassault which left her in a coma before herdeath. The film is dedicated to her memory.

Recycling bottles, cans, plastics andmetal is not romanticized in the film, butit is easy to see the way it makes sense tosomeone who needs work and watcheswhat Bay Area citizens throw away with-out thinking. Toys, clothes, books, as wellas recyclables are easy to find in Bay Areadumpsters and garbage bins.

We may think of ourselves as green, butsometimes the East Bay Depot for CreativeReuse or Urban Ore option is apparentlyjust too far to travel, and as more recyclingcenters close, people have to travel evenfarther through the streets. For people quickenough, strong enough, and smart enough,the Bay Area’s catastrophic amount ofgarbage can be culled for real gold.

The recyclers are occasionally accusedof theft; PG&E pipe showed up one day atAlliance Recycling, bringing a wreath ofpolice officers and a day without business.Alliance uses video cameras to cooperatewith the police on potential theft issues.

Recyclers are occasionally accused ofpeeing in the wrong place, the same solu-ble problem any neighborhood encounterswith college kids partying in the streets orBay to Breakers runners cutting cornerson their way to the finish line.

But the neighborhood voice that has theOakland City Council’s ear right now ispretty obviously objecting to the sight ofpoverty itself, even poverty with the will-ingness to walk 15 miles a day redeemingmaterials no one else bothers with, just tomake a difficult but independent living.

The majority of any scavenger’s haulis bottles and cans — bottles and canswhich the film depicts in noisy, seeminglyendless cascading waterfalls of color. Thecareful nuance and artifice poured into theappealing, colorful design of each can bycorporate marketing teams becomes ariotous patchwork once sorted andcrushed together, a small ratio of East Baywaste diverted from landfill by the dedi-cation of street recyclers.

Former Congressional RepresentativeRon Dellums is featured in the film makingthe important connection to Oakland’s piv-otal role in World War II. Oakland was“Ellis Island West” for the black men andwomen who were crucial in building theships, the businesses, and the communitythat helped win the war, a communitywhich recycled as a matter of course. Evenchildren at the time collected materials suchas scrap metal, an activity considered acivic duty and an exercise in patriotism.

When the government wanted workersfor the shipyards of Richmond, it not onlysucceeded in creating one of the firstinstances of an integrated work force, bothracially and by gender: it built housing. Notintegrated housing, but more than 23,000units of workforce housing in four years,including family housing, dorms for singlemen, and recreational facilities for children.This is something worth contemplation.

It isn’t that the government, in state,federal, or municipal form, doesn’t knowhow to build housing for low-income,working people. It’s that, right now, itsear is tuned in to developers’ needs and afew complaints from homeowners whoobject to the sound and sight of shoppingcarts rattling by.

Lena Rickles, the attorney for AllianceRecycling, says the business is slated toclose this August, leaving hundreds ofpeople who currently depend on recyclingat risk of having no legal options for sur-vival. “Neighbors did not want to look atthem,” she says simply of the cascade ofnuisance complaints this legal business

has consistently and successfully fought.“When we damage their humanity wedamage our own.”

Jason Witt, whose recycling feats arelegend, called tent cities “inhumane” duringthe discussion after the film, a discussionwhich looked like a joyous family reunionfor the film’s participants and crew. Hebroke hearts suggesting that people “comedown in person and open up your...every-thing” as a step in awareness for interestedpeople. “We have to stop looking at theproblems that we think we have and look atthe problems we really have.”

Co-director Chihiro Wimbush said, “Ijust happened to spend five years follow-ing people through the streets,” addingthat he still couldn’t believe “how hardworking these people really are.”

Without this film, its grant from theBerkeley Film Foundation, and the enor-mously supportive community that helpedit along, this is a story which might neverhave been told. It is not an exaggeration tosuggest that the spirit that brought thou-sands to work building 747 ships for thewar effort in the 1940s is still here inOakland, at least in the character of thepeople willing to get up every day and siftthrough the unwanted debris of arguablythe most wasteful society on earth to panfor personal survival.

Don’t miss this film!

Dogtown Redemption: Finding Gold in the Garbage

Dogtown Redemption April Screenings

Tuesday, April 57 pm @ The Roxie 3117 16th St., San Franciscoroxie.com

Thursday, April 77 pm @ San Rafael Film Center1118 Fourth St., San Rafaelrafaelfilm.cafilm.org

Saturday, April 93 pm @ The New ParkwayTheater 474 24th St., Oakland

Sunday, April 101 pm @ The New ParkwayTheater 474 24th St., Oaklandthenewparkway.com

Amir Soltani, producer and co-director of Dogtown Redemption, hugs Miss Hayok Kay, a homeless recycler who was killedwhile living on the street, a tragic end to a woman well-loved by many friends.